Dr. Quintero-Rivera received her M.D. and training in clinical dysmorphology from University of Antioquia in Medellin, Colombia, South America, completing her last year of medical schooling on a scholarship at Harvard Medical School. At Harvard she also completed a Clinical Cytogenetics and Research Molecular Fellowships. She is ABMGG-board certified in Cytogenetics and Laboratory Genetics and Genomics. In 2007, She joined the faculty at UCLA, where she completed a third Fellowship in Medical Education. In 2020 she joined as a Clinical Professor in the Departments of Pathology and Pediatrics at University of California Irvine (UCI), and as the inaugural and founder Director of UCI's Clinical Cytogenetics and Genomics Laboratory. She is active in the education of fellows, residents, Genetic counseling students and clinical technologists. She has focused on promoting diversity, inclusion, and equity (DEI) at UCLA and UCI, National societies, and genetics literacy in the community, through her teaching and committee activities. She is the Associate Editor of the Compendium of Cancer Genome Aberrations (CCGA, https://ccga.io/index.php/The_Compendium_of_Cancer_Genome_Aberrations ), a member of the CCGA Knowledgebase workgroup; the Executive committee of the Course Directors specialty interest group of the American Professor or Human and Medical Genetics (APHMG); the advisory board of new American Society of Human Genetics workforce diversity initiative; the 20-23 ASHG Program Committee, and the DEI Committee of the ACMG, and the APHMG, and research committee of Fiesta Educativa Inc.
As a first-generation Latin American she knows firsthand the lack of diversity in the Genetics workforce and in the Medical School faculty; she has mentored in research projects and/or career development several undergraduates, graduates, and junior faculty locally and nationally. She has published in high impact genetics journals https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=quintero-rivera+fabiola in the areas of DEI, intellectual disability, autism, congenital malformations, and cancer genetics. She has received several awards for her research, and teaching.