[8][citation needed] Elsa Alina Casales was born August 14, 1959, in Havana, Cuba, eight months after the end of the Cuban Revolution.

[citation needed] Following her parents' divorce in 1973, Murano relocated with her mother and three siblings to Miami, Florida, where she graduated from Coral Park Senior High School in 1977.

After earning her associate degree from Miami-Dade, she transferred to Florida International University (FIU), supporting her education through loans and scholarships.

[10] Originally intending to pursue a career in medicine, Murano developed an interest in research after participating in a project exploring the potential of CBD and THC extracts in preventing tumour formation in predisposed mice.

This shift in interest led her to enroll in the graduate program at Virginia Tech where she earned a master's degree in anaerobic microbiology in 1987.

[citation needed] At the end of President Bush's first term in office, Murano returned to Texas A&M University, where she assumed the position of Vice Chancellor and Dean of Agriculture & Life Sciences.

[15] In January 2005, Murano became the first woman and first Hispanic to hold the position of Vice Chancellor of Agricultural and Life Sciences in the Texas A&M University System.

[17][18] She was the first female, the first Hispanic-American, and the first person under the age of 50 to serve in the position [6][17] During her inaugural year, Murano spearheaded a university-wide strategic planning initiative.

[citation needed] Such a statement raised a lot of suspicions as to whether McKinney had been planning this from the start of President Murano's tenure, engaging in policies designed to challenge her so that she would either be President in name only, or cause her to resign so he could assume both positions and thereby be in complete control of the University, enabling him to make changes, and essentially ignoring the principle of shared governance.

[citation needed] For her part, President Murano argued that Chancellor McKinney would frequently exclude her from decisions, working out secret agreements with private companies to commercialize scientific advances, providing them with university funds without any due process or input by her administration.

[citation needed] On June 9, 2009, the Faculty Senate at Texas A&M University met and issued a vote of "no confidence" on Chancellor McKinney, as well as a statement of full support for President Murano.

Murano resumed her faculty position and restarted her research program by securing a $1.2M grant from USDA as the lead investigator of a consortium of Texas A&M scientists to work on determining how microbial pathogens contaminate produce in the field.

About a year later, a new Board of Regents officially told Chancellor McKinney to resign from his position, which faculty and staff publicly praised and saw as vindication for their vote of "no-confidence" on McKinney, their continued support for Murano, and the recognition of her courage to do what was right to protect and elevate the University in spite of personal cost, which is exemplary of the core values of Texas A&M University, namely "selfless service" and "integrity".

The Borlaug Institute works in Africa, Central America and the Caribbean, and Asia in projects including production of agricultural crops and livestock, irrigation strategies involving mathematical modeling, compliance with food safety standards, nutrition, trade, education, and youth and gender issues.

2008: Murano was inducted into the Texas Woman of the Year Hall of Fame, named to the Carnegie Corporation of New York's list of "Great Immigrants, Great Americans," and named Outstanding Alumna of Florida International University, where she had earned her Bachelor's of Science degree in 1981, receiving the FIU Medallion at a ceremony on campus..[citation needed] 2009: Murano was inducted into the Miami-Dade College Alumni Hall of Fame, where she had previously earned an Associate of Arts degree in 1979..[citation needed] 2022: Murano was awarded the Virginia Tech's College of Agriculture & Life Sciences Outstanding Alumna in the Global Community in 2022 at its Celebration of Ut Prosim event.

[21][22] In 2020, Murano was appointed to the Council of Advisors to the Director General of the Interamerican Institute for Cooperation in Agriculture (IICA), as a member of the Steering Committee for the Global Confederation of Higher Education Associations for Agricultural and Life Sciences (GCHERA), as a member of the Council of Advisors to the World Food Prize Foundation, considered to be the "Nobel prize" of agriculture, and as a member of the Board of Semilla Nueva, a non-profit organization focused on providing improved corn varieties to farmers in Guatemala.