José Manuel is a Full Professor at Andrés Bello University (UNAB) in Chile and a Principal Investigator at Argentina's CONICET. He holds a Ph.D. in Biological Sciences from the University of Buenos Aires and completed postdoctoral research at Stanford and UC Berkeley. Formerly leading the Molecular Bases of Plant Development group at IFIBYNE, he moved his research to the Leloir Institute in 2015. Currently, he heads the Plant Biotechnology lab at UNAB, focusing on cell wall biology, root hair development, and Arabidopsis thaliana.