Jose is a Chilean, raised in Curico, but Valparaiso is his adopted home. Nevertheless, all his roots are from La Rioja, Spain, where his family originated. He studied at the Catholic University of Valparaiso obtaining in 1981 the professional title of Physical Oceanographer (Thesis). From 1981 to March 2000, he worked as a physical oceanographer at the Instituto de Fomento Pesquero (IFOP-CHILE), a Chilean government research institute for marine and aquaculture research. In May 2000, he moved to the Center for Coastal Physical Oceanography (CCPO) at Old Dominion University (ODU) in Norfolk, Virginia, where he was a Ph.D. candidate in physical oceanography and a research assistant. He defended his thesis in October 2004 and moved to the Universidad del Mar in Puerto Angel, Oaxaca, in the southern part of Mexico. There he taught Introduction to Physical Oceanography to undergraduate students. In April of 2005, he moved back to the USA becoming a postdoc with the Old Dominion University Research Foundation. He worked at NASA Wallops Flight Facility, located in Wallops Island, Virginia.In September 2007, he became a Research Scientist at CCPO.

For many years, his research has been the generation, coordination and/or implementation of multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional and, in some cases , multinational projects. During his career he has participated in extensive and intensive studies of the physical processes and their variability (ENSO and decadal) in oceanic and coastal water, along the Chilean coast, the South East Pacific Ocean and the Southern Ocean. He has also been working on coastal processes in bays, fjords and estuaries in the central and southern part of Chile and in the Chesapeake Bay. His current research is focused on the Offshore Wind, Wave and Current Environment Characterization as source of energy.


Outside the office Jose likes to cook, fix things, ride his bicycle and take photographs.