In 1983 JG Russo obtained a fellowship to study physics at the Instituto Balseiro, Bariloche, Argentina, where he obtained the degree (Licenciatura) in Physics (12/1986). He was awarded a SISSA fellowship to follow the PhD programme at SISSA, Trieste, Italy, where he finished his PhD (10/1990) under the supervision of Daniele Amati on Quantum gravity and String theory. As a postdoc at Stanford University, USA, he collaborated with Lenny Susskind on black hole physics. He continued his research on black holes and string theory first at the University of Texas at Austin, USA, and then at CERN, Geneva. In 1998 JG Russo moved to the University of Buenos Aires as a Professor and in 04/2003 joined ICREA as a Research Professor.