I am a Professor at the Department of Astronomy of the University of Maryland at College Park. I was born and grew up in Uruguay, where I studied at the schools of Sciences (Instituto de Física) and Engineering ( Instituto de Ingeniería Eléctrica) of the Universidad de la República in Montevideo.

I came to the U.S.A. in 1993 for my Ph.D., which I received from the Department of Astronomy at Boston University. Before coming to the U.S. I worked on dynamics of comets with with Julio A. Fernández, and was later attracted to gravitational microlensing with Emilio Falco. The chief instigator of the Ph.D. was Emilio , but the ultimate responsibility belongs to my adviser, Jim Jackson, from whom I learned about radio and ISM. After my dissertation I went to the Department of Astronomy at U.C. Berkeley. There I spent seven years at the Radio Astronomy Lab, working with Leo Blitz and Richard Plambeck first as a postdoc, then as a staff scientist. I moved to Maryland in 2007, and got tenure in 2012.

I work on many topics, primarily extragalactic. My main goal is understanding how galaxies, including our own Milky Way, came to be as they are today. That requires putting together knowledge from many astronomy branches such as cosmology, interstellar medium, star formation, and black holes. I am an experimentalist and enjoy using many instruments, such as the VLA (pictured here), CARMA, ALMA, Herschel, and HST.

Teaching:
ASTR 340 Origin of the Universe

Useful Resources/Fun/Procrastination: