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06 March 2020 | Story Thabo Kessah | Photo Tsepo Moeketsi
Dr Ocaya
Dr Richard Ocaya’s research addresses the skills development and transfer millennium goal of many governments globally.

With the Fourth Industrial Revolution becoming a reality, Dr Richard Ocaya’s research is receptive to the fact that Africa and the world need to re-imagine their research. His research focuses on electronic instrumentation design for scientific measurements, computational physics on atomic nano-atomic structures, and semiconducting organic compounds materials built on silicon to realise Schottky devices.

Software developer 
“I develop most of the instrumentation that I apply in my research – both software and hardware,” said Dr Ocaya, a Physics Lecturer and Programme Director: Physics and Chemistry on the UFS Qwaqwa Campus.

“I am active in scientific computing through the computing cluster and software development, mathematical physics for material science modelling, and embedded instrumentation design using microprocessors. I also have deep interest in radio and data telemetry, in which I hold a South African patent issued in 2013. My present international collaborations are with like-minded researchers in similar fields in Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Japan, Egypt, South Korea, and the United States,” he added.

How does his research talk to the real world?
“The driving principle of all areas of my research has always been to deploy cutting-edge research to actual, real-world applications for the immediate betterment of Africans. The areas of my research align closely with the millennium goals of many governments globally, including the Republic of South Africa. These goals pertain to skills development and transfer that position us to better address the challenges of energy, water, and other priorities.”

Dr Ocaya is currently co-promoting a PhD student, having previously supervised one PhD, two MSc, and more than twenty honours students. He is a self-taught electronics and computer programmer, whose curiosity led him to question ‘the voices and music coming from a box; a radio’. “In my quest to satisfy my curiosity, I collected many discarded devices, took them apart, and tried so many circuits, only to have them fail because the theory was lacking. After thousands of failed projects and with me barely thirteen and in lower secondary school, my first ever project actually worked,” he said.

NRF-rating
He is the author of the book Introduction to Control Systems Analysis using Point Symmetries: An application of Lie Symmetries, which is available in all major bookstores such as Amazon, in both print and e-book format. He is a C3 NRF-rated researcher whose work makes a pioneering contribution to the new and growing field of phononics, an independent field of the now established photonics.

“This field will someday lead to improved energy-storage devices and faster processors due to more efficient heat removal from nanodevices,” he concludes.


News Archive

UFS to establish Sesotho language research and
2004-12-01

The Council of the University of the Free State (UFS) approved the establishment of a Sesotho Language Research and Development Centre.

The centre will be established on request of the national Department of Arts and Culture and will be situated at the UFS’s Vista campus.

According to the Dean: Faculty of Humanities at the UFS, Prof Gerhardt de Klerk, the national department has committed itself to make available R1-million for the project. An amount not exceeding 3,5 percent will be paid to the UFS in payment of costs incurred in terms of the housing of the centre.

“The tasks of the centre will include the promotion of indigenous languages and terminology development; the research, development and maintenance of a terminological data base and the writing and publishing of various genres of literature in co-operation with relevant and interested parties,” says Prof de Klerk.

Other tasks include the establishment and maintenance of a language museum, outreach to the community and the mobilisation of support for the use of African languages.

“The centre will be managed by a management committee consisting of a representative of the Department of Arts and Culture, the academic registrar, head of the Department of African Languages, chief financial official of the UFS, a member of the UFS Senate, a senior lecturer/professor from the School of Languages/ Faculty of the Humanities, the head of the provincial language unit and a representative of PANSAD,” says Prof de Klerk.

Media release
Issued by: Lacea Loader
Media Representative
Tel: (051) 401-2584
Cell: 083 645 2454
E-mail: loaderl.stg@mail.uovs.ac.za
1 December 2004

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