Mauricio is a biologist with a master's degree in biological sciences and expertise in bioinformatics, genomics, and evolution. Mauricio’s PhD focuses on determining the geological influence on speciation, using plant species in the Colombian Andes as a model system, through the analysis of environmental DNA (eDNA).

His research is part of the Bursting Speciation from Geological Dynamics in Mountains (BurGeoN) project led by Prof. Loïc Pelissier at the ETH. Since 2025 Mauricio has worked alongside park rangers and local collaborators in several field expeditions to National Natural Parks in Colombia: PNN Puracé, PNN Doña Juana, and PNN Las Orquídeas, located in the Departments of Cauca, Nariño, and Antioquia, respectively. During these sampling campaigns, they collected environmental DNA (eDNA) samples from freshwater ecosystems, as well as soil, water, and sand samples for physicochemical analyses. His work includes processing of the eDNA samples, performing mass spectrometry analyses on water samples to characterize the physicochemical properties of each sampling basin and sieving sand samples to describe their lithological composition.

He loves evolution at all scales and hopes that his contribution will support the characterization of plant biodiversity in the Andean forest ecosystems of the Western, Central, and Eastern Cordilleras of Colombia. The data generated from these samples contribute to a better understanding of the origin and diversification of plant lineages, as well as their relationship with landscape evolution and the uplift of the Colombian Andes.