Next Thursday, April 30, a new SO-IFIC colloquium will take place, featuring Professor Oscar Naviliat-Cuncic from Michigan State University (USA). Under the title “Searches for Exotic Interactions in Nuclear Beta Decay,” Professor Naviliat will review the role of nuclear beta decay in the search for new physics, highlighting some important results. The presentation will also address current activities related to high-precision measurements of certain observables in beta decay.

Nuclear beta decay has probably been the most extensively studied process among those mediated by the weak interaction. In the past, it served as an ideal means to establish some of the fundamental properties of the weak interaction. Even today, beta decay remains a very useful tool for testing nuclear structure models and provides a sensitive window for the search for new physics beyond the electroweak Standard Model, in processes involving the lightest quarks.

Oscar Naviliat-Cuncic obtained his PhD in nuclear spectroscopy from the Catholic University of Louvain (Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium). During his postdoctoral stay at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, he began working on low-energy precision measurements, using polarized nuclei to test discrete symmetries in beta decay (maximal parity violation, time-reversal invariance, and conservation of the vector current), and polarized muons to measure an asymmetry–polarization correlation sensitive to parity violation. Since 1999, he has been a professor at the University of Caen Normandy (France), where he led a project to measure beta–neutrino correlations from radioactive ions confined in a transparent Paul trap, carried out at the Grand Accélérateur National d’Ions Lourds (GANIL). He also participated in measuring the neutron lifetime using polarized neutrons confined in a magneto-gravitational trap, and he is a member of the collaboration measuring the neutron electric dipole moment at the Paul Scherrer Institute. Since 2010, he has also been a professor of physics at Michigan State University (USA). His current research focuses on the search for CP violation in ortho-positronium decay and on the search for exotic interactions in nuclear beta decay.

In addition, Professor Naviliat is currently a Severo Ochoa Distinguished Visitor at IFIC, from April 14 until May 26, 2026.