Orazio Descalzi is a researcher in nonlinear physics and complex systems. He is a physicist from the University of Chile. He received his PhD in Physics from the Universität Essen, Germany in 1994. He has been Director of Research at the Universidad de los Andes between 2012 and 2018. He is currently Director of the Interdisciplinary Evaluation Group of ANID (National Agency for Research and Development).

Orazio Descalzi is also the head of the Complex Systems group, which conducts theoretical research in partial differential equations, particularly those that describe localized structures (dissipative solitons) in out-of-equilibrium systems such as optical systems or surface chemistry.

Another of the branches of interest of the research group are random processes where noise can be intrinsic (such as thermal noise) or aggregated (such as multiplicative noise).

He has been awarded numerous research projects funded by Conicyt as principal investigator and has more than 70 publications. He is one of the regular co-organizers of the Medyfinol (Conference on Non-equilibrium Statistical Mechanics and Nonlinear Physics).

He is a full professor at the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Sciences at the Universidad de los Andes where he teaches Thermodynamics.