Augusto Pérez-Gómez, Ph.D. Director of NUEVOS RUMBOS Dr. Pérez-Gómez, was born in Bogotá , Colombia. He obtained his Ph.D. at Louvain’s University (Belgium), where he lived five years, with a dissertation on the evaluation of psychotherapy in 1977 he began his clinical practice, and since then on he has seen in therapy more than 2200 people from almost any possible background. In 1986 he created ‘La Casa’ program at the University of Los Andes, a center dedicated to the treatment and rehabilitation of very poor (indigent and homeless ) drug users; on the basis of this experience he proposed a treatment model, a synthesis of which was published in the Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment (1993, 10, 317-321) under the title of “The ambulatory treatment of non-compulsive users of psychoactive substances”. Dr. PérezGómez was the director of La Casa for almost 11 years. He has worked only in four universities: Lille (France) as a young professor (1974-1975); Los Andes (Colombia), for most of his life (1975-2002); London University as a Visiting Professor (1994); and also as Visiting Professor at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, USA (2004-2006). Dr. Pérez-Gómez has been writing and doing research on treatment and prevention strategies for Latin American drug users for almost 30 years. What he likes more than everything else is doing research, solving problems and taking challenges, along with teaching and doing therapy. He has published 8 books and 142 papers (up to May 2010) in Spanish, English, French and German (in that order) In his leisure time Dr. Pérez-Gómez likes to walk and climb up the beautiful mountains near Bogotá, almost always alone. He reads a lot and has a passion for classical music and art. Nowadays, his main interests are philosophy of science, music, literature, history of religions and ethology. In September 2006 he received the National Award of Excellence in Blending Research and Practice of the NHSC.