Fernando Pinho

Universidade do Porto

Mechanical Engineer

Fellow, Elected 2025

Dr. Fernando Pinho received his undergraduate degree (the “Licenciatura”) from the Department of Mechanical Engineering of the Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto (“FEUP”), Portugal in 1984 and then joined the staff of the Department as a Junior Assistant, receiving his M.Sc from the same University in 1989. He then obtained a leave of absence and moved to Imperial College London to pursue his Ph.D. (awarded 1990) in the area of turbulent flow of polymer solutions. After completing the PhD he returned to FEUP and became an Assistant Professor. Apart from a brief interlude at the University of Minho between 2004-2008 he has remained at FEUP and became full Professor (“Professor Catedrático”) in 2014. In 2004 he was awarded a “Habilitation” (DSc(Eng)) in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Coimbra, Portugal.

Dr. Pinho’s research specialties focus primarily on non-Newtonian fluid mechanics. His work encompasses both analytical, numerical and experimental approaches. He has made major contributions to the understanding of the turbulent flow of polymer solutions, developing the first rigorous turbulence models for dilute polymer solutions for example, working with collaborators Manuel Alves and Paulo Oliveira he has also significantly developed numerical methods for viscoelastic models of the differential type and helped demonstrate the utility of the finite-volume technique for such fluids. Their work in this area has significantly advanced the state-of-the-art and helped make accurate and stable numerical calculations essentially routine. He has also made significant contributions to the study of microfluidic flows of complex flows, including the first investigations of electro-osmotic flows of viscoelastic liquids in such geometries as well as a series of papers investigating so-called purely-elastic instabilities.

He has served on a wide range of technical and scientific committees organizing numerous meetings and technical symposia. He serves on the editorial boards of three archival journals, and from 2013-2019 was co-Editor in Chief of the Journal of Non-Newtonian Fluid Mechanics (JNNFM).