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, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

, the Kavčić-Moura University Professor of Mathematics at Carnegie Mellon University, 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 ...

, which is part of the

Mellon College of Science The Mellon College of Science (MCS) is part of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, US. The college is named for the Mellon family, founders of the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research, a predecessor of Carnegie Mellon Unive ...

's Department of

Mathematical Sciences The mathematical sciences are a group of areas of study that includes, in addition to mathematics, those academic disciplines that are primarily mathematical in nature but may not be universally considered subfields of mathematics proper. Statist ...

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 land-grant research university in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. ...

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 and 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), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Si ...

. In 2011, Fonseca was elected president of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, serving in office from 2013 to 2014. 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 r ...

in 2014 and 2015. Furthermore, she is currently serving as the Chair of

SIAM Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is bo ...

's Activity Group on Mathematical Aspects of Materials Science, with the term lasting until December 31, 2024. In addition, Fonseca was elected to serve as a Vice President 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, ...

for a three-year term, beginning in February 2024.

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, Springer Verlag, 2007)

Awards and honors

Fonseca is a knight of the Order of Saint James of the Sword. 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

. She is also a former AMS Council member at large. In 2021, she was elected to the European Academy of Sciences (EURASC) and, in 2022, she received the Senior Prize from the International Society for the Interaction of Mechanics and Mathematics for "her outstanding contributions to the calculus of variations and the mathematics of materials science, along with her exemplary service to the mathematical community and for being an inspirational mentor and role model for female mathematicians."

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fonseca, Irene 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