is a resident physician in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California San Francisco. He earned his MD at Stanford University. He also has an MSc in Biomedicine, Biotechnology and Society from the London School of Economics where he wrote his thesis "Classifying Ayahuasca: The Role of Subjective Experience in Psychiatric Research with Psychedelics" under the orientation of Dr. Ilina Singh. He has a BA in Biochemistry with a minor in Latin American and Latino Studies from the University of Pennsylvania. He speaks English, Spanish and Portuguese, and he has been conducting ethnographic research with different communities of drug users since 2005. He has studied migrant Mexican communities in the United States, the Uniao do Vegetal ayahuasca religion in Brazil, cognitive enhancer use in the UK, and mutual aid groups for addiction recovery in Mexico.