I
was born in
northern Chile in a large city called Antofagasta; only 120 km away
from two of the most important locations in ground-based astronomy:
Cerro Paranal - home of the VLT, and Cerro Armazones - home of the
E-ELT. Antofagasta is also 300 km west from the Atacama Large
Millimeter Array (ALMA).
You could say therefore that astronomy was somehow
part of the daily life I grew up with. However, this wasn't enough to
get me into astronomy early in my life, where I rather spent most of my
time playing music and day-dreaming about traveling. So when I became a
free man, not surprisingly I played music, and I traveled, for about 2
years.
When it was time to choose a more stable career I
decided to go for science as, I figured, it would eventually get me
some more traveling (which it has). And understanding the laws of the
Universe did not sound too boring either. In 2011 I obtained my
licentiate degree in Astronomy at the Pontificia Universidad Catolica
de Chile, and I am now working on my thesis in order to obtain the
doctoral double-degree at Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile and
Heidelberg University.
When I am not being an astronomer, I still very much
enjoy playing music and compulsively adding more books to my Kindle.