He received a B.S. in civil engineering from the National University of Colombia at Medellin and M.S. degrees in hydrology and applied mathematics from New Mexico Tech. He also received his Ph.D. in Earth and environmental science from New Mexico Tech in 2013. From 2013 to 2015, Gomez-Velez worked as a National Research Program postdoctoral fellow at the USGS in Reston, Va. His research combines numerical modeling, data mining and assimilation, and field and laboratory observations to gain a deeper understanding of how water, solutes and energy move through landscapes and river systems, and the implications of these transport processes for humans and ecosystems. Currently, most of his work focuses on the interactions between surface water and groundwater at multiple spatial and temporal scales, ranging from small river bedforms and reaches to continents.