Hugo Castelán Sánchez graduated from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) with a chemist-pharmacist-biologist degree. He earned a Master's degree in genomic sciences from the Postgraduate Program in Genomic Sciences at the Autonomous University of Mexico City. He holds a PhD in molecular and cellular biology from the Center for Cellular Dynamics Research at the Autonomous University of the State of Morelos, where he focused on studying metagenomes and viromes from extreme environments to describe the diversity and function of viruses within these environments. He has specialized in molecular evolution and viral diversity, utilizing bioinformatics tools and next-generation sequencing. He has worked as a bioinformatics specialist in sequencing and bioinformatics at SENASICA, analyzing bacterial genomes of agro-food sector interest obtained through next-generation sequencing. He is a member of the Mexican Society of Virology and the Mexican Consortium for Genomic Surveillance. He worked as a researcher for Mexico at CONACYT and is a member of the National System of Researchers, Level 1. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Western Canada.