About
Gabriela Quirós is a TV Producer for KQED Science & Environment. She started her journalism career in 1993 as a newspaper reporter in Costa Rica, where she grew up. She won two national reporting awards there for series on C-sections and organic agriculture, and developed a life-long interest in health reporting. She moved to the Bay Area in 1996 to study documentary filmmaking at the University of California-Berkeley, where she received master’s degrees in journalism and Latin American studies. She joined KQED as a TV producer when QUEST started in 2006 and has covered everything from Alzheimer’s to bee die-offs to dark energy. She has shared two regional Emmys, and three of her stories have been nominated for the award as well. Independent from her work on QUEST, she is producing an hour-long documentary for PBS about the surprising story of how Costa Rica became the only country in the world to outlaw in-vitro fertilization.
All Contributions by Gabriela:
Science on the SPOT: Fungus Fair
QUEST tags along with fair organizer J.R. Blair and his San Francisco State University students as they collect mushrooms in San Francisco's McLaren Park. Then we tour the annual Fungus Fair in Berkeley to explore the Bay Area's tasty, dangerous and weirdly wonderful fungi.
Video on Mar 09, 2011
15 Months Later, Rediscovered San Francisco Plant Thrives
Fifteen months after a native plant thought to be extinct was rediscovered in San Francisco, local botanists have succeeded in growing it and are making plans to plant it out in the wild.
Post on Jan 19, 2011
Science on the SPOT: Restoring San Francisco's Lost Manzanita
QUEST explores how the San Francisco Botanical Garden is toiling to bring one of the city's rarest native plants, the Franciscana manzanita, back from the brink of extinction.
Video on Jan 19, 2011
Health Officials to Consider Tightening Vaccine Exemptions
Concerned by the increase in the number of children who are starting kindergarten without all their vaccines, public health officials in the Bay Area will look into the possibility of tightening the system that allows parents to opt out from mandatory immunizations.
Post on Oct 13, 2010
Aviation Authorities Prepare for Space Tourism
Several private companies are planning to offer the public rides into space starting in the next two to five years. Aviation authorities are preparing for a future in which airplanes and spaceships will share the air.
Post on Sep 28, 2010
San Francisco Among Top Cities For HIV Testing
New CDC survey shows that San Francisco has been successful in getting HIV-positive men tested.
Post on Sep 24, 2010
Writer Irwin Silber Dies; Was Featured in QUEST TV Story
Oakland writer Irwin Silber died last week. He and his wife, singer Barbara Dane, were featured on a QUEST TV story about Alzheimer's disease.
Post on Sep 16, 2010
New Laser Could Create Atomic "Movies"
The world's first X-ray laser could help scientists develop new energy sources and pharmaceuticals.
Post on Aug 17, 2010
Major Breakthrough in Reviving Heart Cells
Scientists reported today that they have succeeded for the first time in creating beating heart cells from other types of adult cells.
Post on Aug 05, 2010
Whooping Cough Epidemic Exposes Holes in California's Immunization System
The whooping cough epidemic that has killed six babies and made an estimated 1,500 people sick in California this year is exposing holes in the state’s immunization system, which leaders in the public health community are now racing to patch.
Post on Jul 28, 2010
Homegrown Particle Accelerators
QUEST journeys back to find out how physicists on the UC Berkeley campus in the 1930s, and at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in the 1970s, created "atom smashers" that led to key discoveries about the tiny constituents of the atom and paved the way for the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland.
Video on Jul 27, 2010
Producer's Notes: Homegrown Particle Accelerators
If you’re enthralled by the Large Hadron Collider, you’ll want to watch QUEST’s story on atom smashers.
Post on Jul 27, 2010
Northern California Scientists Helping Lead Project To Build World's Biggest Telescope
Scientists from the University of California are working to construct the largest telescope on Earth.
Post on Jul 19, 2010
Amazing Jellies
They are otherworldly creatures that glow in the dark, without brains or bones, some more than 100 feet long. And they live just off California's coast. Join two top marine biologists who have devoted their careers to unlocking the mysteries of jellyfish and alien-like siphonophores.
Video on May 25, 2010
Producer's Notes: Amazing Jellies
What are the longest animals in the world? Hint: you’ve most likely never heard of them. They glow in the dark and have many stomachs, mouths and tentacles – sometimes hundreds.
Post on May 25, 2010
Maya Skies
Armed with laser technology, Bay Area engineers are helping create detailed virtual records of the world's great monuments. Their realistic recreation of the Mexican ruins of Chichén Itzá is the basis for "Tales of Maya Skies," a new half-hour film about Maya astronomy designed especially for a planetarium. The film opens at Oakland's Chabot Space & Science Center on November 21. QUEST takes you behind the scenes.
Video on Oct 13, 2009
Your Photos on QUEST: Doug Nomura
San José photographer Doug Nomura has learned just how to track his subjects to create arresting photos of birds in flight. He focuses his work on the Bay Trail, a 300-mile trail around the Bay. QUEST joins Nomura on the bayfront in Sunnyvale as he works to photograph the many bird species that call the South Bay's mudflats home, or stop here as part of their migration.
Video on Oct 13, 2009
Producer's Notes: Your Photos on QUEST—Doug Nomura
San José photographer Doug Nomura has learned just how to track his subjects to create arresting photos of birds in flight. He focuses his work on the Bay Trail, a 300-mile trail around the Bay. QUEST joins Nomura on the bayfront in Sunnyvale as he works to photograph the many bird species that call the South Bay’s mudflats home, or stop here as part of their migration.
Post on Oct 13, 2009
Producer's Notes: Maya Skies
Go behind the scenes of Tales of Maya Skies, the new film produced by Oakland's Chabot Space and Science Center. The half-hour film about Maya astronomy opens at the center's planetarium on November 21.
Post on Oct 13, 2009
Youth Speaks Green: Simone Crew
Simone Crew of Youth Speaks, a San Francisco literary arts organization, recites "Yasmeena," one of her "green inspired" poems.
Video on Sep 22, 2009
