Elio García-Austt

at the University of the Republic in 1948, and obtained a gold medal with a doctoral thesis on "Repercussion of some metabolic alterations on the bioelectric potentials."

Before his graduation, he had started his career as a neuroscientist, developing clinical electroencephalography at the Instituto de Endocrinología using the first recording instrument available in Uruguay by 1942.

In 1951, he worked in the Neurophysiology Laboratory of the Pontifical Catholic University at Santiago de Chile under the direction of noted neurobiologist Prof. Joaquin Luco.

At this school, García-Austt set up a course of the nervous system which included faculty from the physiology, biophysics, histology, anatomy, and pharmacology departments.

In 1973, he was invited by Jose M. Rodriguez Delgado to work in Madrid, Spain, collaborating in the development of neurobiology at the "Hospital 'Ramón y Cajal' of Social Security".

This grant, the EU's first scientific funding initiative in Latin America, supported the development of five neuroscience research projects across multiple Uruguayan laboratories.

In Uruguay, García-Austt organized national and international neuroscience courses, laying the groundwork for what would later become the "Escuela de Neurociencia" in Hispanic America.