Born in Oakland, CA, he attended the University of California, Berkeley, earning a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering (ME) and Nuclear Engineering (NE) in 1987, and a PhD in Nuclear Engineering in 1990. His employment history states that from 1990-1998 he was employed at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), a research organization affiliated with the California Institute of Technology on behalf of NASA. From 1998-2010, Aquino worked at the Sandia National Laboratory, another government lab located in the desert of New Mexico, conducting nuclear weapons research.