I was born in Turrialba, Costa Rica, a little town surrounded by an active volcano (3339 m), active faults, rivers, and green mountains. I was born in a local hospital, named William Allen, located just on the trace of the Turrialba fault, one of the fault segments of the pull-apart basin where my town is located. I have Lithuanian and Spanish roots, and my grandparents shared three different religions: Catholic, Judaism, and Baptist. My family on both sides is everywhere. I have relatives in Costa Rica, Germany, Spain, the US, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Japan, Ecuador, Paraguay, and Belgium. I am proud to have African, European, and Asian looking cousins spread around the world!

I grew up in Turrialba. I went to the local high school, name in honor of the Dr. Clodomiro Picado Twight, a great Costa Rican scientist, pioneer of toxicology in Latin America who discovered the penicillin (although, the discovery has been attributed to Alexander Fleming in 1945, Clorito's old laboratory notebooks from 1923 show records of this antibiosis).

I attended the University of Costa Rica, first at my hometown Turrialba. In 1997 I moved to San José, the capital of Costa Rica, where I studied Geology at the Central American School of Geology of the University of Costa Rica. I got my Bachelor’s degree in 2000. Right after my graduation, I started working at both the National Seismological Network and the Laboratory of Earthquake Engineering of the University of Costa Rica. At the same time, I continue my studies on Geology and I got a Licenciatura degree in Geology in 2003. I wrote a thesis about the active tectonics of the eastern segment of the Central Costa Rica Deformed Belt, with the advisory of Professor Walter Montero.

In 2004 I moved to the United States, where I did my Masters at Michigan State University. My masters thesis was about seismic signal identification of earthquakes and explosions in eastern Russia. My advisor was Dr. Kazuya Fujita.

In 2006, I moved to Tucson Arizona, where I am doing my PhD, working with Susan Beck and George Zandt. I am now focused on two regions Costa Rica and the central Andes in Argentina.