Leopoldo Penna Franca (April 7, 1959 – September 19, 2012, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)[1] was a Brazilian-American mathematician.
After graduation, he worked at the pt:Laboratório Nacional de Computação Científica - LNCC in Brazil.
From 1993 to 2011, he was a full professor and researcher of mathematics at the University of Colorado Denver.
From 2008 to 2010 he was a visiting professor and researcher of mathematics at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro - UFRJ / Coppe at the Civil Engineering Department in collaboration to Alvaro Coutinho.
Received in 1999 the Gallagher Young Investigator Award for "outstanding accomplishments in computational mechanics, particularly in the published literature, by a researcher 40 years old or younger".