I was born and raised in Venezuela and have been interested in science and natural history from a very young age. My interest in insects began as a teenager, encouraged by entomological courses in high school. This interest grew and fueled my undergraduate studies in Agronomic Engineering at the Universidad Central de Venezuela. This university is a pillar for entomological studies in my home country and hosts the Museo del Instituto de Zoología Agrícola “Francisco Fernández Yépez” (MIZA), one of the best entomological collections in Latin America, with a strong academic tradition in the field.

I began working on beetle taxonomy during my undergraduate studies under the supervision of Prof. Luis J. Joly, with a broad interest in several beetle groups, but focusing on scarabs. I shifted my focus to the poorly known family Salpingidae for my Master's and Doctoral degrees in Entomology, both also supervised by Prof. Joly. My interest in weevils began in my teenage years thanks to a close friend and mentor, Carlos Bordón, an avocational entomologist specialized in weevils.

My research on Salpingidae led to collaborations with John Lawrence, Adam Slipiński, and Rich Leschen, and eventually brought me to the Australian National Insect Collection (ANIC-CSIRO) in Canberra. More recently I did a postdoc in Bonn, Germany supported by a Humboldt Research Fellowship to work on insect molecular phylogenetics and genomics with Bernhard Misof and Oliver Niehuis. I currently work as a researcher and curator at ANIC, collaborating closely with Rolf Oberprieler, Debbie Jennings, and several other colleagues on the taxonomy of Australia's fascinating weevil fauna.