Ariel Fernández is an Argentine-American physical chemist and mathematician. He obtained a Ph. D. degree in Chemical Physics from Yale University and held the Hasselmann Endowed Chair Professorship in Bioengineering at Rice University until his retirement. To date, he has published over 400 scientific papers in professional journals including PNAS, Nature, Nature Biotechnology, Physical Review Letters, Genome Research and Genome Biology. Fernández has also authored five books on biophysics and molecular medicine and holds several patents on technological innovation. Since 2018 Fernández heads the Daruma Institute for Applied Intelligence, the research arm of AF Innovation, a Consultancy based in Argentina and the USA.