I was born and raised in Santiago, the capital of Chile. My degrees are in mathematics and statistics. I obtained my first university degree from Universidad de Chile in 1996 (BS in Mathematics) and my second university degree from Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile in 1998 (BS in Statistics). Then I moved to the USA where I obtained my PhD from the Department of Statistics at Rutgers University in 2004.

After finishing my graduate studies I moved to Europe. First to Oxford, where I held a postdoctoral position in the Department of Statistics at Oxford University. I was there for two years working for the HapMap project. Then I moved to Munich, where I held a postdoctoral position at LMU/GSF. I worked on genetic association studies in the context of the KORA 500K project.

After almost ten years abroad, I am now back in my home country since January 2008 working as an assistant professor at Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile.