Pedro Amaral
President at UFMG
Minas Gerais, Brazil
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolPedro Amaral is an accomplished regional economist and academic leader with 13 years of experience bridging rigorous research and practical policy engagement, currently serving as President of Fundação Rodrigo Mello Franco de Andrade and Associate Professor at UFMG. He holds a PhD in Land Economy from Cambridge, is a Senior Fellow at the University of Chicago’s Center for Spatial Data Science, and has been a Visiting Professor there since 2020. A deputy editor-in-chief of Regional Studies, Regional Science, he co-leads development of spreg in PySAL—an influential open-source spatial econometrics module with over a million downloads—demonstrating a rare blend of scholarly impact and hands-on software contribution. His career combines departmental leadership, high-level research honors, and advisory roles in urban transport and planning, reflecting both academic distinction and practical influence on regional policy.
13 years of coding experience
Doctor of Philosophy - PhD, Doctor of Philosophy - PhD at University of Cambridge
Github Skills (4)
error-handling10
python10
testing9
documentation8
Programming languages (5)
Github contributions (5)
pysal/pysal
May 2013 - Jan 2017
PySAL: Python Spatial Analysis Library Meta-Package
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:40 commits, 3 PRs, 8 comments in 3 years 9 months
Contributions summary:Pedro contributed to the PySAL library by fixing error messages and updating documentation for various spatial econometrics models. Their work focused on improving the clarity of error messages within the inverse distance weights calculations, making the library more user-friendly. Furthermore, they integrated the `spreg_1.6` branch and updated tests to maintain compatibility with the `pysal 1.6` release. The user's commits demonstrate a focus on the core functionality and maintenance of the spatial econometrics models within the library.
meta-packagepythonspatial-analysispysalspatial
pedrovma/spreg-1
Sep 2018 - Feb 2025
Contributions:7 PRs, 137 pushes, 9 branches in 6 years 5 months
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