José F. F. Mendes is a Full Professor of Physics at the University of Aveiro, Portugal, and one of the world’s leading researchers in the field of complex systems and network science. He obtained his PhD (1995) and Habilitation (2002) in Physics from the University of Porto, where he began his academic career before joining the University of Aveiro in 2002.

At the University of Aveiro, he served as Vice-Rector for Research (2010–2018), Director of the Department of Physics (2004–2010), and is currently Director of the i3N/Aveiro – Institute of Nanostructures, Nanomodelling and Nanofabrication. His leadership extends internationally, having been Vice-President and Treasurer of the European Consortium of Innovative Universities (ECIU) and a member of the Council Board of the Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory (INL), among several other scientific and administrative roles.

Professor Mendes was President of the Complex Systems Society (2021–2024) and has served on numerous editorial boards, including Scientific Reports, Complexity, Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Entropy, and Journal of Complex Networks. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Complexity section of Entropy and a reviewer for the European Research Council (ERC) and the IBM Prize Committee.

His research focuses on the statistical physics of complex systems, random networks, and nonlinear phenomena, having published over 165 papers in leading international journals — including Nature Physics, Reviews of Modern Physics, Advances in Physics, and Physical Review Letters. His work has received more than 25,000 citations (h-index 54), and he has authored several highly influential books, such as Evolution of Networks: From Biological Nets to the Internet and WWW (Oxford University Press, 2003; 2nd edition, 2013), Weak Multiplex Percolation (Cambridge University Press, 2021), and The Nature of Complex Networks (Oxford University Press, 2022).

Professor Mendes has supervised many PhD students and  postdoctoral researchers, many of whom have gone on to win national and international awards. His scientific contributions have been recognized with numerous distinctions, including the Gulbenkian Science Award (2004), Senior Prize of the Complex Systems Society (2020), Fellowships of the Academia Europaea (2012), American Physical Society (2020), and Network Science Society (2019), among others.

Through his pioneering work, José F. F. Mendes has helped to shape the modern understanding of complex networks — from biological systems to social and technological infrastructures — and continues to play a central role in advancing the science of complexity worldwide.