Minerva is an Associate Professor at the Geneva School of Health Science. Prof. Rivas is also a member of the editorial board of the journal Bioetica Forum of the Swiss Society for Biomedical Ethics and is the Disability Data Hub coordinator for Europe and Central Asia.
In 2015, Rivas Velarde completed a PhD in Philosophy of Medicine at the University of Sydney. Her thesis focuses on the mandate of Article 25, "Health" of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. She also holds a Masters in Applied Social Research from Trinity College Dublin.
After her PhD, Rivas Velarde pursued her career at the International Labour Organisation, where she continued studying the CRPD application. She also worked with the Disability Unit of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Then, she joined the Department of Radiology and Medical Informatics at the Faculty of Medicine in Geneva. In 2018, as a post-doctoral fellow, she began working at the Faculty of Medicine's Bioethics Laboratory (IEH2) to investigate ethical issues relating to access to healthcare for people with disabilities and the use of technology in healthcare.
In 2021, Rivas Velarde received an Ambizione grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation to study, as a team leader, how to improve access to healthcare for people with disabilities using information and communication technologies.
Rivas Velarde made several academic visits, including to Harvard Law School, the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and the Universidad del Rosario in Colombia.
