Nico Orce

Full Professor of Physics, University of the Western Cape
Nico Orce is a nuclear physicist whose passions are novel science and true transformation. Nico's research involves fundamental nuclear physics and includes 150 publications (~1/3 led by him) in Physics mainly, but also in top Mathematics, Biology and Astronomy journals. He has broadly explored the nuclear chart using a variety of nuclear techniques and theoretical calculations and discovered new types of collective excitations and shell phenomena in nuclei. Nico and collaborators recently discovered changes in nuclear polarization that narrow down the reaction network for element production in stellar explosions, which may explain the universality of elemental abundances in our universe [https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/525/4/6249/7259922]. As PI, he has secured research funds worth over R50M, led to the completion of African-led experiments at CERN and the implementation of major infrastructure research projects in South Africa:

1. the GAMKA spectrometer at iThemba LABS; and
2. Modern African Nuclear DEtector LAboratory at UWC.

Prof Orce has active experiments and observations at different laboratories and observatories around the world, including iThemba LABS, SALT, TRIUMF and CERN. He is the chair of the Tastes of Nuclear Physics conference series and the Science Research Open Day 2013, bringing in 2012 Nobel Laureate in Physics, Serge Haroche, to UWC. He is the referee of most nuclear physics journals and a proud Honorary Visiting Professor at the University of York, he has given talks at CERN, Yale, Cambridge and Oxford, and was nominated for the Margarita Salas Award in 2021, aimed “to recognize international impact, contributing to social progress in an exemplary and extraordinary way”. His postgraduate students are world-trained and find jobs in the local and international nuclear energy, big-data and machine-learning industries as well as in national research facilities such as the National Metrology Institute and iThemba LABS or Universities in Japan, China, Canada or India.

For more information about Nico’s work please visit: https://nuclear.uwc.ac.za or the group’s GitHub @ https://github.com/UWCNuclear