Dr Fernandes obtained her MBBS from St. John’s Medical College, Bangalore, India (2002) and her MRCPCH in Paediatrics from Wessex Deanery (2018). She completed a DPhil in Child Psychiatry with Professors Alan Stein and Paul Ramchandani at Department of Psychiatry and Exeter College, Oxford (2011) and was awarded the Clarendon Fund, Exeter Kokil Pathak and the Harold Hyam Wingate Scholarships for her doctoral research. This was followed by a post-doctoral research fellowship (2012-2015) with the INTERGROWTH-21^st Project and the INTERBIO-21^st Study at the University of Oxford, where she led the design, development and implementation of the INTER-NDA, a novel multi-dimensional international screening tests for early child developmental delay. This work resulted in two seminal research outputs: (1) The construction of the first international standards of early child development developed according to the WHO’s prescriptive guidelines, and (2) Confirmation, from a large international dataset, that young children across geographically and culturally disparate population show remarkable similarities in neurodevelopment if their health, nutritional and social needs are met during early life.

In 2016, Dr Fernandes was awarded an NIHR Academic Clinical Fellowship in Paediatrics by the University of Southampton. In 2019, she was awarded the Southampton Biomedical Research Centre Career Track Fellowship in Paediatrics and the British Science Association’s Media Fellowship. In 2020, she secured a sub-speciality (GRID) training position in Neonatal Medicine ranking 3^rd in the national recruitment interviews and in 2021 she was awarded an MRC Postdoctoral Clinical Research Training Fellowship in Paediatrics for her ongoing research in early child development at the University of Southampton with Professors Caroline Fall, Nicholas Harvey and Cyrus Cooper. 

She has continued to work closely with NDWRH at Oxford through her collaborations with the INTERGROWTH-21^st Project and the INTERBIO-21^st Study, and in 2018 co-led the launch of the EveryPrem Study at Oxford.  She has co-authored three novel early child development tools: the Neo-NDA, the OX-NDA©^TM and the INTER-NDA©; the latter and its standards have been applied in over 15,000 children from 14 countries. Over the past decade, she has been involved with 17 child development focussed research projects spanning 21 research groups across 14 countries, including 3 as Chief Investigator, and 5 as Co-Principal Investigator with research awards from the NIHR and MRC (UK); NIH, USAID and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (USA); and ICMR (India). Dr Fernandes has served as a technical advisor to the WHO’s Early Child Development Initiative, and the Bill & Melinda Gates’ Foundation HBGD Knowledge Initiative.