Jorge received a Master's degree in Biomedical Research from the Institute of Biotechnology in UNAM, Mexico. He received a Ph.D. in Molecular Parasitology from the University of London at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. His interest in RNA biology and a prestigious Pew Fellowship Award led him to Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, where he joined the lab of Barbara Sollner-Webb to work on RNA editing in trypanosomes. There, he characterized the molecular mechanism of the editing process using purified editing proteins and synthetic RNA substrates.