Professor Ballesteros earned his Ph.D. in Environmental Science from the New Jersey Institute of Technology–Rutgers University. He currently holds the Don Felipe Say and Teresa Chua Say Chair in Chemical Engineering at UP Diliman. He was a Visiting Professor at the University of Salerno, Italy. He also facilitated partnerships between UP and institutions such as NJIT (USA), University of Salerno (Italy), and I-Shou University (Taiwan).

His research and extension work focuses on watershed management and hazardous waste. He is a member of the Technical Working Group of the Consortium of Urban Subsurface Environment Management in Asia, under the Philippine National Water Resources Board. He developed a cost-effective protocol for classifying tributaries and a community-based Stream Visual Assessment Protocol adapted from the USDA model.

In hazardous waste management, he supported the Philippine government through projects with UNIDO and UNDP to meet Stockholm Convention commitments, particularly on managing PBDE and PFOS in e-waste, foam, and plastics. At UP Diliman, he teaches graduate-level courses in Biological Wastewater Plant Design and Hazardous Waste Management at the Environmental Engineering Department, College of Engineering.