Commissioner Stella Alabastro Quimbo is an academician who served as a Professor and the Department Chair of the University of the Philippines School of Economics prior to her appointment in the Philippine Competition Commission.

From 2011 to 2013, she was a Prince Claus Professorial Chair Holder at Eramus University of Rotterdam in the Netherlands.

Commissioner Quimbo has an extensive research portfolio in the field of Health Economics, Industrial Organization, Microeconomics, Education, Poverty, and Public Policy and Regulation. This includes her attendance in a succession of both international and local academic conferences, and authorship of numerous scientific and technical publications, one of which was acclaimed 2015 Outstanding Scientific Paper Awardee by The National Academy of Science and Technology (NAST). Later, NAST also conferred on her the Outstanding Youth Scientist Award.

She was also a Freedom Flame Awardee of a German foundation for liberal politics, Friedrich Neumann Foundation for Freedom Philippine Office, and a recipient of the UP President Edgardo J. Angara Fellowship and UP Diliman Centennial Faculty Grant.

She obtained her BS in Economics (summa cum laude), MA in Economics and PhD in Economics from the University of the Philippines in 1991, 1993 and 2000, respectively. She spent a year at Brown University (Providence, Rhode Island) as a post-doctoral fellow in 2002 at the Population Studies and Training Center.