Rodrigo was born in Spain and raised in Madrid, Cairo (Egypt), and Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). He holds a MSc in Biodiversity (2010) from the University of Leiden and a PhD in Biology (2014) from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. He was a Postdoctoral fellow at Aarhus University Denmark, Royal Botanic Gardens Kew UK, and  the Bascompte lab, University of Zurich. Since 2023, he is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Systematic and Evolutionary Botany, University of Zurich. For information on the lab, see Lab website