He is a specialist in the use of technology in foreign-language teaching and online instruction—his teaching load has been 100 percent online for the past five years. He also has developed several Spanish assessment and placement tools. Nogales was born in Pedrera (Seville), Spain. He completed his bachelor of arts at the Universidad Pontificia Comillas in Madrid, his master's at San Francisco State University, and his Ph.D. at the University of California at Davis.