He is a researcher at the Institute of Engineering of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. He is a part-time professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio. At UNAM, he has served as Secretary General and Director of the Institute of Engineering. He was the Undersecretary of Energy Planning and Technological Development and for North America. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the International Association for Earthquake Engineering, and of the Mexican Academies of Sciences and Engineering, where he served as president. He is an International Member of the National Academy of Engineering of the United States of America. He is the President of the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations.
He is the founder and president of Exponential Mexico, a think tank on the future of exponential technologies and their utilization for the benefit of Mexico. He holds an honorary Doctorate in Science from the University of Arizona and is a Distinguished Alumnus of the School of Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. He is a Civil Engineer from the Faculty of Engineering at UNAM and holds a Ph.D. in Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.