Although his father was a physician who worked more in academia than in a clinic, the lack of strong science teachers in secondary school led him to become more interested in politics.
Due to the restructuring of the Higher Education system as a result of Juan Perón’s dictatorship, many of his professors were younger and recent graduates of post-doctoral programs in the US and Europe.
During his final year at the University of Buenos Aires, his father suggested that he should pursue his PhD at the Fundación Instituto Leloir, and so he enrolled in the Biochemistry course there.
In 1970, he joined Leloir and Nicolas Behrens in their research that was involved with the incubation of dolichol-P-Glc using liver microsomes to transfer glucose to a dolichol-P-P-linked glycan known as Glc3Man9GlcNAc2-P-P-dolichol.
[1] After completing his fellowship in Paris, and returning to Buenos Aires, between the years of 1975 and 1978, he conducted research involved with demonstrating the presence of a dolichol-P-dependent pathway of N-glycosylation in yeast.
However, a paper in 1980 that stated the lack of free or sugar-bound dolichol-P in trypanosomatid protozoa meant that the pathway he discovered was not in the organism.