Director of International Development Seismology
IRIS Headquarters
Phone: 202-682-2220 ext. 121
Email: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Dr. Olga A. Cabello joined IRIS as Director of International Development Seismology in September 2009, bringing twenty years of experience as an academic scientist combined with extensive experience in science diplomacy and science policy.
Prior to joining IRIS, Olga Cabello served as a AAAS Fellow in the Office of the Science and Technology Adviser to the U.S. Secretary of State. In this capacity, she focused on engaging the talent and intellectual power of the U.S. scientific academic community as a core resource in U.S. diplomacy and served as the principal liaison between the Office of the Science Adviser and the U.S. scientific academic community. She represented the Science Adviser in the interagency working group that organized the Higher Education Summit for Global Development, a conference that convened 184 university presidents from the U.S. and 68 developing countries by invitation of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings in Washington, DC, in April, 2008. She also represented the Department of State as one of the lead organizers of the Workshop on Internationalization of Research and Graduate Studies and its Implications in the Transatlantic Context in Atlanta, GA, in November 2008, in collaboration with the French Presidency of the European Union and the European Commission. Dr. Cabello represented the Science Adviser to the Secretary of State on the Subcommittees on Education and on Human Factors for Homeland and National Security of the Committee on Science of the National Science and Technology Council. On behalf of the Department of State, she served as the lead facilitator in the drafting and signing of the Memorandum of Understanding between USAID and the National Science Foundation to leverage resources for scientific capacity building in developing countries.
During the first session of the 111th Congress, Dr. Cabello was a Capitol Hill Fellow of the Government Affairs Institute of Georgetown University in the U.S. Senate.
Olga Cabello received her undergraduate degree in Biomedical Engineering from the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City, Mexico, and a doctoral degree in Molecular Biophysics from Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, TX. She continued her formal scientific training at Baylor College of Medicine as a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology and, subsequently, in the Department of Molecular and Human Genetics. In 1998, she was appointed to the faculty at Baylor College of Medicine, where she led an independent research program. In 2005, Dr. Cabello was appointed Associate Professor at the Quillen College of Medicine with primary teaching responsibility in the field of human and molecular genetics at the graduate and postgraduate level.
Dr. Cabello has been recipient principal investigator of three grants from the National Institutes of Health and a research award from the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation. She has trained many young scientists, including honors high school students doing summer projects, graduate students working on their Ph.D. dissertations, and postdoctoral fellows. Dr. Cabello has served on four Special Emphasis Review Panels for the National Institutes of Health evaluating applicants for pre- and postdoctoral fellowships. Her scientific research has been published in 14 peer-reviewed publications and has yielded nearly fifty scientific communications and invited presentations to national and international conferences.
Throughout her career, Dr. Cabello has received numerous awards, including the Individual National Research Service Award (NRSA) from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute; the Procter & Gamble Professional Opportunity Award for Meritorious Research from the American Physiological Society; the Pfizer Award for Scientific Excellence from the Minority Affairs Committee of the American Society for Cell Biology; the Annenberg Foundation Host Faculty Award in three consecutive years; the Abbott Laboratories Award for Innovative Research; and the Minority Faculty Career Development Award from the National Institutes of Health.
Olga Cabello is a native of Mexico and a fluent Spanish speaker. She is married and has two daughters. The family maintains homes in the Washington, DC area and in North East Tennessee.
