Institution
The academy
Applied physics research institute, in Yaoundé.
Mission
Nangmo Academy produces physics (condensed matter, statistical physics, plasmas, materials physics) on the questions that govern energy access and electronics reliability in the humid tropics.
We are neither a consultancy nor a technology-transfer office. We work on open questions, with a physicist's methods, and we publish.
Why here, why now
The literature on materials degradation, electronics reliability and photovoltaic yield was written for temperate, desert or continental climates. The humid tropical climate (one of the harshest on the planet for materials) is a blind spot.
The Congo basin is the most thunderstorm-prone region in the world, and the physics of lightning–grid coupling there is almost unexplored. Access to cobalt, nickel and iron resources, with no lithium, shifts the electrochemistry questions towards systems the lithium race has left understudied.
Working principles
- Open questions, not demonstrators
- A project enters the programme if it contains a physics question the literature does not answer. Prototypes follow; they do not lead.
- Facilities chosen for the question
- Each area is built around a specific setup (compute cluster, electrochemical bench, climatic chamber, exposure field) sized for the question at hand.
- Open publication
- Systematic preprints, data and code released alongside every paper.
- Training through research
- Every area carries master's and doctoral topics. Training experimental and computational physicists locally is part of the output.
Scientific organisation
Three departments (Energy Physics, Electronics Physics, Cross-cutting Infrastructure) and a shared computing platform serving all three.
