Jorge Golowasch was born and grew up in Santiago, Chile. His college education was at the Faculty of Sciences, Universidad de Chile (major in Biology, concentration in Neuroscience). He moved to the US in 1986 to do a Ph.D. at Brandeis University, then did post-docs at the Ecole Normale Superieure (Paris, France), U. Kaiserslautern (Germany) and at HHMI (Mass Gen Hospital, Boston).