Spring 2026 Physics Careers Seminar Series Continues April 24 with Prof. Rafael Fernandes, Professor of Physics, UIUC, and Lead Editor, Physical Review Letters

The Spring 2026 Physics Careers Seminar series continues on Friday, April 24 with a talk by Prof. Rafael Fernandes from the Department of Physics, UIUC, and Lead Editor of Physical Review Letters, who will talk about "A Look Into Physical Review Letters" at 12:00 p.m. CT in 204 Loomis (Interaction Room). Details of Rafael's seminar are given below.

Time: 12:00 p.m. CT on Friday, April 24, 2026

Location: 204 Loomis (Interaction Room). A Zoom link will also be forwarded to the Illinois Physics Grad Student email list. For a copy of the link, please contact Lance Cooper (slcooper@illinois.edu).

Title: A Look Into Physical Review Letters

Speaker: Prof. Rafael Fernandes from the Department of Physics, UIUC, and Lead Editor of Physical Review Letters

Abstract: In this talk, I will share my experience as the Lead Editor of Physical Review Letters (PRL) and present a brief overview of the rich history of the journal. Built by the collective work of the physics community over many decades, PRL is one of the most prestigious journals in physics and the outlet in which many ground-breaking discoveries have been reported. Indeed, 14 of the last 15 Nobel Prizes in Physics involved work published in PRL. I will present some of the changes that PRL has undergone since its beginning in 1958 and discuss how its success has been enabled by authors, reviewers, and a unique editorial structure that currently consists of more than 140 editors among full-time editors, academic editors, and divisional associate editors. 

Bio: I am a Professor of Physics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where I have been since 2024. Before that, I was a Distinguished McKnight University Professor at the School of Physics and Astronomy of the University of Minnesota, where I was a faculty member from 2012 to 2024. Since 2025, I have also been the Lead Editor of the journal Physical Review Letters. I received my 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. I am a condensed matter theorist whose primary interest is on the microscopic understanding and modeling of the collective behavior of electrons in quantum materials, aiming at establishing a clear relationship between their microscopic behavior and their macroscopic properties.  

You can see the rest of the Spring 2026 Physics Careers Seminar series here: https://physics.illinois.edu/calendar/careers-seminar