Joaquín Rapela was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he studied Computer Science at Universidad de Buenos Aires (1998). After working for one year at the IBM Almaden Research Center, San José, CA, he started his graduate studies at the University of Southern California (2000). He obtained a masters degree in Electrical Engineering (2003), he studied Neurosciences and Mathematics, and he is currently a PhD candidate at the Signal and Image Processing Institue of the Department of Electrical Engineering.