Juan Carlos Fontecilla-Camps obtained an M.Sc. degree in Biochemistry at the University of Concepción, Chile, in 1974, and, in 1980, he obtained a Ph.D. degree at the University of Alabama in Birmingham, USA. Since 1982, he has worked in several research centers in France, a country which, in 2005, awarded him the title of Knight of the Order of Academic Palms (the oldest of civil distinctions) for his contribution to French culture and knowledge. He was the Head of a Research Unit in Marseilles from 1986 to1990 and of a laboratory at the Institut de Biologie Structurale (IBS) in Grenoble between 1991 and 2016.  He is currently "Research Adviser" of the "Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique et aux Energies Alternatives" (CEA), at the IBS. His field of research is protein crystallography, a scientific area relevant to the structural understanding of biological processes and drug design.