Leticia Palhares is a professor of Theoretical Physics at the Rio de Janeiro State University (UERJ) and an Affiliate Member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences for the period 2020-2023. Her research area is at the intersection of particle and high energy nuclear physics, targeting the mystery of confinement of the elementary constituents of atomic nuclei and the phases of matter under extreme conditions of temperature and density.

Palhares pursued her studies at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, with a PhD research period at L’Institut de Physique Théorique (IPhT) of the Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique et aux Energies Alternatives (CEA), in France. She was awarded the Humboldt fellowship in 2012 by the Alexander von Humboldt foundation in Germany, the Brazilian award for Women in Science in 2014 in physics through the L’Oréal-UNESCO-ABC partnership, as well as several grants from Brazilian funding agencies.

Photo: Agnes Rissardo/UERJ.