News – Nuclear Physics at UWC

September 9, 2024: Congratulations to Craig and Vicente for our publication on the ²³Mg(p,γ) reaction in nova explosions.
July 31, 2023: Our work on ¹³⁶Cs is now published in the Physical Review Letters!
September, 2022: Congratulations to Esmond Craig Vyfers for passing his M.Sc. with the highest distinction – Summa Cum Laude. Craig’s thesis was on the ²³Mg(p,γ) nuclear reaction rate in novae, and can be downloaded here.
June 30, 2022: Congratulations to Xolisani Ngwadla for being awarded a Graduate Exchange Student bursary from the Arthur B. McDonald Canadian Astroparticle Physics Research Institute. Xolisani will spend 3 months at SNOLAB and Laurentian University, working on low-activity studies related to neutrinoless double beta decay searches.
May 22, 2022: Smarajit’s article on physics-inspired COVID19 modeling is out in The Conversation.
May 01, 2022: All the best to Jespere Ondze and Odwa Tyuka, who will be visiting Stanford University for 2.5 months to work on nEXO related research with Prof. Giorgio Gratta’s group.
Jan 10, 2022: Our paper describing COVID-19 pandemic waves is published in Chaos, Solitons & Fractals.
Dec 15, 2021: Our work on IMME violation in mass 32 is now out as a Letter to Phys Rev C. Congratulations to Mohamed Kamil for his hard work on this. This paper was selected as an Editors’ Suggestion and highlighted on the journal front page.
Nov 08, 2021: Our paper describing a phenomenological modeling of power-law epidemic growth is now published in Epidemics.
April 15, 2021: Our paper that describes the modeling COVID-19-type infection spread using a random walk approach is published in Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications.
August 2020: We are now members of the nEXO collaboration! This large-scale experiment aims to measure ¹³⁶Xe neutrinoless double beta decay. Jespere Ondze, Goitseona Ramonnye, Odwa Tyuka and Xolisani Ngwadla will be the first students from UWC who will work on nEXO related research projects. Exciting times!
July 2019: Congratulations again to Mohamed Kamil for being one of 5 students worldwide to be awarded a European Physical Society (EPS) fellowship to attend the 2019 International School on Nuclear Physics in Erice, Sicily.
December 2018: Congratulations to Mohamed Kamil getting his MSc degree with distinction. Also to Justice Mukwevho for publishing part of his MSc research results in a Rapid Communication with the Physical Review C.
July 2018: Jespere Ondze gets a full scholarship to attend the Fifth African School on Fundamental Physics and Applications in Windhoek, Namibia.
April 12, 2018: As part of the commissioning for the DSAM lifetime measurement program, a 125 MeV ²⁰Ne⁴⁺ beam was delivered successfully to target on the G-line at iThemba LABS. This is a brand new beam line was developed by the UWC team (part of Bhivek Singh’s thesis), in collaboration with IThemba LABS scientists and engineers.
January 23, 2018: Ph.D. student Bernadette Rebeiro invited to present her work at the Institute for Nuclear Theory (INT) program on “Nuclear ab initio Theories and Neutrino Physics” in Seattle. She joins the ranks of a select group of young researchers who have been invited to present at the INT before completion of their Ph.D!
September 15, 2017: Our colleague Nico Orce successfully leads the University of the Western Cape and 4 other institutions to receive R35M funding from the National Research Foundation for building the GAMKA gamma-ray spectrometer. Great job Nico!
March 15, 2017: MSc student Lutendo Phuthu’s research work on ²¹Ne(p,γ) published in the Physical Review C. Congratulations!!
March 1, 2017: Congratulations to Zandile Mabika for being the only one of ~500 candidates to be selected as Associate Network Consulting Engineer at Cisco Systems Inc
November 30, 2016: International review panel for the iThemba LABS long-range plan gives a thumbs-up (high priority) to the Doppler Shift Lifetime measurement program lead by UWC. The design and simulation of the set up was part of MSc student Bhivek Singh’s thesis. Well done Bhivek!
July 08, 2016: Congratulations again Bernadette for winning a prize for best talk in the Nuclear, Particle and Radiation physics section of the SAIP 2016 conference in Cape Town.
July 03, 2015: Congratulations to Bernadette and Zandile for winning awards at the SAIP 2015 conference in Port Elizabeth.