Professor at the Institute of Marine and Limnological Sciences of the Austral University of Chile, director and principal investigator of the IDEAL Center, collaborator of the Chile-France LIA-MAST International Center and the COPAS-Coastal Center of the University of Concepción.

He completed his doctoral and postdoctoral fellow at the University of Bremen, Germany. During that period, he participated in expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctica, where he investigated the vertical particle flux and biogeochemical fluxes in marine ecosystems of high latitude.

Over the past decade, he has been dedicated to researching the carbon flux through pelagic food webs and exportation of carbon to the seabed and sediment in fjords and channels of the southern Patagonia of Chile.

In recent years, he has devoted himself to studying the coupling between pelagic and benthic systems and the role of plankton in the biological carbon pump. His studies have contributed to understanding carbon fluxes through the classical and microbial food webs. His latest research has been in the area of the science-politics interface, through reports within the framework of the Scientific Committee for Climate Change of the Ministry of Science, Technology, Knowledge and Innovation.