APS is delighted to announce that Dr. Rafael Fernandes has been appointed to the role of Lead Editor of Physical Review Letters, the flagship publication of the American Physical Society. Dr. Fernandes is a Professor of Physics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he has been since 2024. Before that, he was a Distinguished McKnight University Professor at the University of Minnesota. He received his PhD at the University of Campinas, Brazil, in 2008 and held postdoctoral appointments at the Ames National Laboratory/Iowa State University and Columbia University/Los Alamos National Lab. Dr. Fernandes is a condensed matter theorist interested in the collective behavior of interacting electrons in quantum materials, focusing on phenomena such as superconductivity, electronic liquid crystals, and unconventional magnetism. He is an APS Fellow, a Cottrell Scholar, and a Mercator Fellow. Dr. Fernandes’ tenure begins September 1.
