João Miguel Augusto Penedones Fernandes (born (1980-08-02)August 2, 1980 in Porto, Portugal) is a Portuguese theoretical physicist active in the area of quantum field theory.

He then returned to the University of Porto to work as a research fellow until 2015, when he was named tenure track assistant professor at EPFL.

[6][7] One of their research objectives is to develop better non-perturbative methods to study quantum field theories using conformal and S-matrix bootstrap approaches.

One of João Penedones' most important contributions is a conjecture about the conditions upon which a conformal field theory has a gravity dual, later proved by A. Liam Fitzpatrick and Jared Kaplan.

This connection is made more manifest once the correlation function is expressed in terms of Mellin amplitudes as suggested by Penedones.