Gabriela studied International Relations and Communication Sciences. She holds a PhD in Political Sciences and Public Administration from UAB Barcelona, and a CAS International Policy and Advocacy from D-MTEC ETH Zurich. She was visiting scholar at Harvard University and ETH Zurich. At the Cooperation and Development Center (CODEV), holder of UNESCO Chair in Technologies for Development, she managed the Swiss (SERI) EPFL Leading House Program for scientific cooperation with India, Brazil, Vietnam and Latin America. Her research on scientific diasporas yielded various international collaborations. She was a lecturer at the ITESM, researcher at UZH and consultant at UNDP. She was founding advisor of Spring ACT, which connects human rights and technology. Since 2020 she is Vice-President of the Swiss Commission for UNESCO (member since 2016) where she promotes science-society-policy linkages.
In 2019 Gabriela joined the College of Humanities (CDH) as Deputy Director and Head of Unit. She is member of EPFL's Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC), and advocates for refugee scholars and academic freedom as the Scholars At Risk (SAR) delegate at EPFL. She manages the EPFL-UNIL CROSS Program, funding interdisciplinary research on societal and technological challenges.