[2] Collaborating with primatologist Richard Wrangham, Rodriguez introduced the concept of zoopharmacognosy.
[4] Later, at the University of British Columbia, he received medical postdoctoral training in medicinal botany.
[2] He was an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Irvine from 1976 to 1994[4] before joining the faculty at Cornell.
Rodriguez, who is Mexican-American, also serves as a faculty advisor for the Science Organization of Latinos at Cornell.
Rodriguez is the founder of the California Alliance for Minority Participation (CAMP) program funded by the National Science Foundation.