Bio
James earned his PhD in Geography in 2019 from Florida State University, where he also holds a MS GISci. Prior to joining Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 2021, he has spent two years as a post doc with Penn State developing methods for improving the locational accuracy of individual persons and households through secure census microdata. His research lies at the intersection of GIS, spatial data science, and operations research, with strong foci in network-constrained optimal facility location modeling and the modeling consequences of aggregating population data. He is passionate about open & reproducible science, being a core member of PySAL (Python Spatial Analysis Library) and a Topic Editor for JOSS (Journal of Open Source Software). Born and raised in rural north central Florida, James takes any chance he can to get back to the swamp with his wife and dog for hiking or simply relaxing and enjoying nature.
Awards
- (2025) Research Accomplishment Award: HumanMobility Benchmarking Framework – TraKit. Oak Ridge National Laboratory: National Security Sciences Directorate.
Professional Service
- Topic Editor for the Journal of Open Source Software
Professional Affiliations
- Core developer & Steering Council Member – the PySAL project
- Research Affiliate
- Center for Open Geographical Science at San Diego State University (USA)
- Research Team on Urban Structure at Univerzita Karlova (Czech Republic)
Trademarks and Patents
- (2025) TraKit: A Comprehensive Human Mobility Science Framework. Invention Reference Number: 202505915
Publications
Other Publications
- Gaboardi, J.D., Tuccillo, J.V., Isber, J., and Dunkley, J.M. (2025) Producing High-fidelity Synthetic Population Ensembles at Scale. 3rd Annual Conference of the US Research Software Engineer Association (US-RSE‘25). Philadelphia, PA. October 2025. 1–10, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17101082
- Rey, S.J., Anselin, L., Amaral, P., Arribas-Bel, D., Cortes, R.X., Gaboardi, J.D., Knaap, E., Kang, W., Li, Z., Lumnitz, S., Oshan, T.M., Shao, H., and Wolf, L.J. (2022) The PySAL Ecosystem: Philosophy and Implementation, Geographical Analysis, (54) 467-487. DOI: 10.1111/gean.12276
- Gaboardi, J.D., Rey, S.J., and Lumnitz, S. (2021) spaghetti: spatial network analysis in PySAL, Journal of Open Source Software, 6(62) 2826. DOI: 10.21105/joss.02826
- Gaboardi, J.D., Folch, D.C., and Horner, M.W. (2020) Connecting Points to Spatial Networks: Effects on Discrete Optimization Models, Geographical Analysis, (52) 299–322. DOI: 10.1111/gean.12211
- Lumnitz, S. Arribas-Bel, D., Cortes, R.X., Gaboardi, J.D., Greiss, V., Kang, W., Oshan, T.M., Wolf, L.J., and Rey, S.J., splot- visual analytics for spatial statistics, Journal of Open Source Software, 5(47) 1882. DOI: 10.21105/joss.01882