| Rui Loja Fernandes | |
| Birth Date: | July 20, 1965 |
| Birth Place: | Coimbra, Portugal |
| Nationality: | Portuguese |
| Fields: | Mathematics |
| Workplaces: | Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign |
| Alma Mater: | University of Minnesota |
| Thesis Title: | Completely Integrable bi-Hamiltonian Systems |
| Thesis Year: | 1994 |
| Doctoral Advisor: | Peter Olver |
Rui António Loja Fernandes (July 20, 1965, Coimbra) is a Portuguese mathematician working in the USA.
Fernandes obtained a bachelor's degree in Physics Engineering at Instituto Superior Técnico (Lisbon, Portugal) in 1988. He then moved to the USA and earned a master's degree in Mathematics in 1991 and a PhD in Mathematics in 1994 from the University of Minnesota. His PhD thesis was entitled "Completely Integrable bi-Hamiltonian Systems" and has been written under the supervision of Peter J. Olver.
In 1994 he returned to Instituto Superior Técnico, where he worked first as Assistant Professor (1994-2002), and then as Associated Professor (2003-2007) and Full Professor (2007-2012).[1] [2]
In 2012 he moved back to the USA and since then he is the Lois M. Lackner Professor of Mathematics at University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.[3] In 2016, he became a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society "for contributions to the study of Poisson geometry and Lie algebroids, and for service to the mathematical community."[4]
Fernandes research focusses on differential geometry, more precisely on Poisson and symplectic geometry. Among his most well-known results are a solution to the long-standing problem of describing the obstructions to the integrability of Lie algebroids[5] and a new geometric proof of Conn's linearization theorem,[6] both written in collaboration with Marius Crainic.
He is the author of more than 40 research papers in peer-reviewed journals[7] and has supervised 6 PhD students as of 2021.