Fabiola Quintero-Rivera received her M.D. and training in clinical dysmorphology from University of Antioquia in Medellin, Colombia in 2002, completing her last year of medical schooling on scholarship at Harvard Medical School. After completing her degree, she stayed on at the Center for Human Genetic Research at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and at Harvard Medical School as a Co-Investigator in the Developmental Genome Anatomy Project (DGAP). In 2004, she won a competitive MGH clinical research award for her work on the identification of a gene (NFIA) important for the development of the corpus callosum. That same year, she also joined the Clinical Cytogenetics Fellowship program at Harvard. Dr. Quintero-Rivera is certified by the American Board of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ABMGG) and the American Society for Clinical Pathology. In 2007, Dr. Quintero-Rivera joined the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). In 2015, She completed a Fellowship in Medical Education David Geffen School Of Medicine at UCLA. She was given accelerated promotions to Associate Professor Step 1 and Step 3, in 2012 and 2015, respectively, in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at UCLA, as well as maintaining her position as Associate Director of the UCLA Clinical and Molecular Cytogenetics Laboratory and Director of the UCLA Clinical Cytogeneticists Scientist Training Program. In 2019 she was promoted to Clinical Professor.
She also played a key role in the establishment of the UCLA Clinical Microarray core, Exome sequencing, and UCLA Clinical Genomics Center. In addition, Dr. Quintero-Rivera has participated in the development of the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG) standards and guidelines for interpretation and reporting of postnatal constitutional copy number variants (CNVs) detected by microarray. Until 2020 she was part of the Genomic Data board for interpretation and reporting of clinical exome sequencing for diagnosis of Mendelian Disorders. She has received several awards for her research, teaching and service, including the American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC) Faculty Career Development award at UCLA, and the Outstanding Alumni Award presented during the 230-year Anniversary of her Alma Mater, School of Medicine Universidad de Antioquia, Medellin, Colombia, and most recently the UCLA Intercampus Medical Genetics Training program 2020 “Excellence in Classroom Instruction” Award. Many of the fellows she has taught and mentored have become faculty at UCLA and other academic medical centers nationally and internationally. In 2015, She completed a Fellowship in Medical Education David Geffen School Of Medicine at UCLA. Until 2020 she was the Program Director, ABMGG Cytogenetics Fellowship Training at UCLA, the Associate Program Director of the Laboratory Genomics and Genetics (LGG) fellowship, and the Director of the Medical Genetic course for fellows enrolled in the UCLA Intercampus Medical Genetics Program. She is active in the education of fellows, residents, medical students and technologists. In 2020 she joined the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at School of Medicine, University of California Irvine (UCI), as a Clinical “X” Professor, and as the inaugural and founder Director of UCI’s Clinical Cytogenetics and Genomics Laboratory.
