During the last two decades, Fernando has been exploring Amazonian biodiversity and the associated indigenous knowledge, two precious heritages deeply interlinked in the Amazonian culture. He believes that these two legacies are not only vital for Amazonian people but also for humanity to thrive. During this period, he has been the scientific coordinator of the Takiwasi Center and the principal investigator of the ATOP Project (Ayahuasca Treatment Outcome Project) focused in the medicinal indigenous knowledge and how it may help non-indigenous people to heal from addictions and other mental diseases that are poorly addressed by the modern paradigm of health. He has also led a phytopharmaceutical laboratory specialized in developing, producing and commercializing natural health products from Amazonian medicinal and aromatic plants. In this role, he conceived and implemented an intercultural methodology that facilitates the dialog and cooperation between indigenous people´s traditional knowledge, pharmaceutical technology, marketing and modern commercial approaches to develop and introduce products into the market, building up impact business models. To achieve this venture, he has collaborated with governmental and non-governmental national and international conservation agencies, indigenous communities and organizations, academic and research institutions to create, fund and execute impact projects.

Before his Amazonian experience, he has been interested in understanding living organisms at the molecular level, from bacteria to humans. For his PhD he studied the function of the human thyroid gland focused on the genetic and molecular mechanisms for the production of thyroid hormones in normal and pathological conditions at University of Buenos Aires and University of Salamanca in Spain. After his dissertation he was invited as guest researcher to Antarctica for a project studying the genetics of bacteria adapted to metabolize hydrocarbons from oil spills at low temperatures with bioremediation purposes. He then moved to Europe for a postdoc position at the Free University of Brussels, School of Medicine where he investigated orphan cellular receptors with unknown functions but conserved along the animal kingdom from flies to humans.