Dr. Luis A. Fernandes received a degree in Applied Physics in 2006, and a Ph.D. in Physics in 2012, from the Faculty of Science at the University of Porto, Portugal.

In 2008 he was awarded a Ph.D. fellowship from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, to pursue his thesis entitled “Birefringence and Bragg grating control in femtosecond laser written optical circuits.” His doctoral work was researched in collaboration with the Photonics Group at the University of Toronto, where he became a postdoctoral fellow in 2013. From 2013 to 2018 he worked as a senior optical scientist at OZ Optics Ltd. At the end of 2018 he joined VIAVI Solutions Inc. as a senior optical designer.

He served as a member of the board of the University of Toronto SPIE Student Chapter from 2010 to 2013 and is a member of the IEEE, SPOF, SPF, OSA, and SPIE.
As a student, he participated in the IEEEXtreme competition in 2009, 2010, and 2012 and since 2014 he has served as a volunteer in the quality assurance team. In 2018 he joined the IEEEXtreme Executive Committee as Technical Judges Lead.