Irene Maria Quintanilha Coelho da Fonseca is a Portuguese-American

applied mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History One ...

, the Kavčić-Moura University Professor of Mathematics at

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

, where she directs the Center for

Nonlinear Analysis Nonlinear functional analysis is a branch of mathematical analysis that deals with nonlinear mappings. Topics Its subject matter includes: * generalizations of calculus to Banach spaces * implicit function theorems * fixed-point theorems (Br ...

Professional career

Fonseca was born in

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of ...

, and did her undergraduate studies at the

University of Lisbon The University of Lisbon (ULisboa; pt, Universidade de Lisboa, ) is a public research university in Lisbon, and the largest university in Portugal. It was founded in 2013, from the merger of two previous public universities located in Lisbon, th ...

.. She earned a Ph.D. from the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Tw ...

in 1985, under the supervision of David Kinderlehrer, who later followed his student to CMU. She joined the CMU faculty after postdoctoral studies in

Paris, France Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

. In 2011, Fonseca was elected president of the

Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) is a professional society dedicated to applied mathematics, computational science, and data science through research, publications, and community. SIAM is the world's largest scientific socie ...

. She also served on the Mathematical Sciences jury for the

Infosys Prize The Infosys Prize is an annual award given to scientists, researchers, engineers and social scientists of Indian origin (not necessarily born in India) by the Infosys Science Foundation and ranks among the highest monetary awards in India to re ...

in 2014 and 2015.

Books

Fonseca is the co-author of: *''Degree Theory in Analysis and Applications'' (with Wilfrid Gangbo,

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...

, 1995) *''Modern Methods in the Calculus of Variations: L^P Spaces'' (with

Giovanni Leoni Giovanni may refer to: * Giovanni (name), an Italian male given name and surname * Giovanni (meteorology), a Web interface for users to analyze NASA's gridded data * '' Don Giovanni'', a 1787 opera by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, based on the legend ...

Springer Verlag Springer Science+Business Media, commonly known as Springer, is a German multinational publishing company of books, e-books and peer-reviewed journals in science, humanities, technical and medical (STM) publishing. Originally founded in 1842 in ...

, 2007)

Awards and honors

Fonseca is a knight of the

Order of Saint James of the Sword The Military Order of Saint James of the Sword ( pt, Ordem Militar de Sant'Iago da Espada) is a Portuguese order of chivalry. Its full name is the Ancient, Most Noble and Enlightened Military Order of Saint James of the Sword, of the Scientifi ...

. In 2009, Fonseca was elected as a fellow of SIAM "for contributions to nonlinear partial differential equations and the calculus of variations". In 2012 she became a fellow of the

American Mathematical Society The American Mathematical Society (AMS) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, and serves the national and international community through its publications, meetings, ...

.List of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society
retrieved 2013-01-21.

References

Year of birth missing (living people) Living people 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians 20th-century Portuguese mathematicians American women mathematicians University of Lisbon alumni University of Minnesota alumni Carnegie Mellon University faculty Fellows of the American Mathematical Society Fellows of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Knights of the Order of Saint James of the Sword Presidents of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Variational analysts 20th-century women mathematicians 21st-century women mathematicians 21st-century American women {{Portugal-mathematician-stub