I was born in Córdoba, Argentina, and graduated in physics in 1985 from Balseiro Institute in Bariloche, Argentina. In 1986 I moved to Germany for my PhD at the Max-Planck Institute FKF in Stuttgart with Prof. M. Cardona, which I finished in 1989. It followed a two-years postdoc at AT&T Bell Labs in Murray Hill, USA, and back to the MPI Stuttgart for three years. In 1996 I switched to the Technical University of Berlin for an appointment as Research & Teaching Associate. In 1999 I was awarded the Karl-Scheel Prize of the Physical Society of Berlin for my contributions to the field of high-pressure semiconductor physics. In November 2003 I became ICREA Research Professor and joined the Optoelectronic Properties of Nanostructured Materials group at ICMAB-CSIC. I created a facility for optical spectroscopy with micro and nanometer-scale resolution and I further set up a laboratory for high-pressure physics. I am also leading the group activities on thermoelectricity.

I am an experimental physicist with broad interests and expertise in solid-state physics, optical spectroscopy (Raman scattering, photoluminescence, etc.), nano-science and technology, thermoelectricity, the physics of low-dimensional materials (superlattices, quantum wires and dots), highly correlated electron systems, and high-pressure techniques. Essentially, I use light as a probe of the physical properties of all kinds of organic and/or inorganic molecular and nano-materials, searching for new behaviors or phenomena that emerge as a direct consequence of the reduced dimensionality and/or size of the material system under study. Although I am principally pursuing basic research, almost all my lines of investigation have a clear application in mind, such as to improve the performance of optoelectronic devices based on nano-materials, enhance thermoelectric and/or photovoltaic properties, boost piezo-resistive coefficients, develop ultra-sensitive spectroscopic techniques, etc.