Degree in Biology from the University of Texas at Arlington, to continue his master's degree in Environmental Engineering in his hometown. At the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC) he develops a large part of his academic master's and doctorate training, with brief stays throughout this period (2006-2012) in Rome to develop the Master's Thesis Project (2008) under the Erasmus program, and in Halifax (Canada) and Luxembourg, already in the pre-doctoral stage. Ian earned his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering in July 2012 at the USC. From that year until December 2013 he worked as an engineer at the Henri Tudor research center of the Luxembourg government.

Much of Ian's research activity during his pre-doctoral stage, as well as in his stage in Luxembourg has been related to the methodological development of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), an environmental management tool, and its application to various productive sectors On the one hand, in terms of its methodological development, Ian's activity has focused on the combination of LCA with other management methodologies, such as Data Envelopment Analysis (economic), GIS (geo-location) or EROI (energy), as well as partial equilibrium models. On the other hand, the productive sectors in which the LCA tool has been applied are mainly focused on the primary sector: fisheries sector and associated industry, bioenergy and viticulture and winemaking. However, it has also developed small studies related to the management of agricultural waste and energy.