Miguel L. Allende currently works at the Center for Genome Regulation, Science Faculty, University of Chile. He received his Bachelor’s in Biology from the Catholic University of Chile in 1987 and a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1994. He was President of the University’s Board for Institutional Evaluation (2020–2021) and was chair of the Biology study section of FONDECYT, the Chilean science funding agency. He was President of the Chilean Society for Cell Biology and Treasurer of the Latin American Society for Developmental Biology. He was a founding member and served on the first Board of the Latin American Zebrafish Network (LAZEN) as well as the International Zebrafish Society (IZFS). Currently, he leads the Center for Genome Regulation and the Chilean 1000 Genomes Initiative, which aims to sequence and analyze the genomes of Chilean endemic species and the Chilean human population.