Gomez-Gardeñes received a PhD in physics from the University of Zaragoza in Spain, with a thesis entitled "Complex Systems: Nonlinearity and Structural Complexity in spatially extended and discrete systems.” After completing his PhD, he conducted postdoctoral research first at the Scuola Superiore di Catania (Italy) in the group of Vito Latora, and then in the group of Alex Arenas at the University Rovira i Virgili (Spain).
After his postdoctoral period, he joined in 2009 the University Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid as Lecturer, before returning in 2011 to his alma mater as a Ramón y Cajal fellow.
Gómez-Gardeñes is well known for his works on the mathematical formulation of multi-scale metapopulation models to integrate human mobility and interaction data on realistic epidemiological frameworks.
In 2007, Gómez-Gardeñes was awarded with the Investigador Novel Prize by the Spanish Royal Physics Society[21] for his works on the structure and dynamics of complex networks.
Gómez-Gardeñes has been visiting researcher at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico (USA), Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel), distinguished visiting professor of the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) in Brazil, and distinguished visitor of the Scottish Universities Physics Alliance[22] (SUPA).