Juan Rodriguez graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering. He participated in a four-week internship at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center during the deployment of the International Space Station. He attended graduate school at the University of California, Los Angeles, obtaining his master’s and doctoral degrees in aerospace engineering, studying the effects of acoustic excitation on droplet combustion of alternative fuels and shear coaxial jets.

Rodriguez obtained postdoctoral appointments at École Centrale Paris, France and the Air Force Research Lab in Edwards AFB, California working on numerical modelling and experimental studies of liquid rocket engine injector flows. He has been an instructor in the School of Engineering at CETYS University in Baja California, Mexico; a lecturer in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology; and most recently, an aeronautical engineering instructor and chief academic officer at the National Test Pilot School in Mojave, California.