Jorge received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry/Molecular Biology through a joint program at the University of Sao Paulo, School of Medicine, Brazil, and the University of California San Francisco, School of Medicine, USA. Jorge has received numerous scholarships, fellowships and awards from diverse organizations including the WHO, McArthur Foundation, and Rockefeller Foundation. He also won a Pew Latin American Fellowship for postdoctoral research in molecular parasitology at the University of California. In 1999 he founded the Molecular Biology Center at the University of Central America, the first molecular biology research and training laboratory in Nicaragua. For over 14 years, Jorge has been the Director and Principal Investigator of the MBC-UCA. For a period of 4 years he was head of Research at UCA. Jorge was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and a Research Fellow at the Sandler Molecular Parasitology Center of UC San Francisco.

His lab currently performs research on molecular parasitology, forensic DNA typing and bio-prospecting for industrial enzymes. His lab has a collaborative program with New England Biolabs on endonucleases and is currently a visiting scientist at the Ocean Genome Legacy and New England Biolabs, MA., USA. He is a consultant to numerous governmental and non-governmental organizations, and has been an outspoken advocate for improving science education and the appropriate use of biotechnology for development. In 2009 Jorge became the Founding President of the Nicaraguan Academy of Sciences.