On 5 April 2019, in the JINR Scientists’ Club, a regular meeting of the JINR Science and Technology Council was held chaired by R. V. Jolos.

Following the tradition, the meeting was opened by information of JINR Director Academician V. A. Matveev. He introduced to members of the STC the milestones of the recently held meeting of the JINR Finance Committee and the session of the Committee of Plenipotentiaries of the Governments of the JINR Member States. According to the Director, the further the Institute advances in implementation of tasks set by the Seven-Year Plan of the JINR development, the more attention is paid by the JINR governing bodies to implementation of particular programmes of the Plan. In addition to justification of general provisions of the next seven-year plan, extensive work is carried out on defining the long-term strategy of the JINR development. The significance of these steps was confirmed by Chairman of the Committee of Plenipotentiaries of the governments of the JINR Member States, Minister of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation M. M. Kotyukov in his speech at the CP session.

V. A. Matveev congratulated the staff of the Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions on the successful launch of the DC-280 cyclotron that is the basis of the Superheavy Element Factory. In this regard, FLNR Scientific Leader Academician Yu. Ts. Oganessian came forward with the proposal to establish in the Institute the prize for the results in implementation of the most vital stages of the scientific and technological programme. M. M. Kotyukov suggested that the JINR Directorate work on this issue and bring it up for discussion at the next CP session.

JINR Director touched upon also other issues related to implementation of the JINR Seven-Year Programme such as the human resourcing, attraction of the youth, development of the social infrastructure, raise of the salary. These and other topics evoked a vivid discussion in which S. N. Nedelko, R. V. Jolos and other participants of the session took part.

JINR Vice-Director Prof. V. D. Kekelidze reported on the CERN International Committee for update of the European strategy for particle physics. Prof. Kekelidze and JINR Vice-Director Academician B. Yu. Sharkov are members of the CERN European Strategy Group (ESG), founded at the CERN Council session, aimed at coordination of drafting the updated European strategy. The key objective of the ESG is to make up the final draft of the programme and bring it up for consideration in CERN. The CERN Council will adopt it in May 2020 and then, will make efforts to implement it in the following years.

Updating of the programme was launched at the regular session of the CERN Council on 27 September 2018, and its first stage continued for half a year. In May 2019, at the open symposium in Granada, provisional results of this process will be presented. Due to the results of work, the scientific report “Briefing book” will be prepared that will become the basis for drafting the final strategy. The European Committee for Future Accelerators (ECFA) will also contribute to this process; it will be presented on 14 July 2019 at the next large-scale conference on particle physics EPS HEP. On 20 – 24 January 2020, the ESG group will sum up the final outcome and make up the plan of the European Strategy for Particle Physics. In March, it will be presented to the CERN Council.

Russia also contributed to development of the updated European strategy: a document demonstrating the role of CERN and JINR was presented; it included, in particular, information about joint work on modernization of the CERN accelerating basis, integration of particle physics with astrophysics, development of research on the basis of the NICA complex and some other directions. In addition to development of major scientific and research directions included into the updated European strategy, V. D. Kekelidze noted that the drafted documents covered such issues as preservation of attractiveness of particle physics among the youth with regard to long terms of projects’ implementation, or fading of scientists’ individuality in large collaborations. R. Tsenov, R. Lednický, I. N. Meshkov, Yu. Ts. Oganessian made comments and answered questions at the meeting.

Opening the next topics of the agenda, R. V. Jolos noted that nowadays, several documents are being drafted in JINR that will touch upon in a certain way the basic interests of the Institute’s staff. Information about progress in the development of the Regulation on the staff was reported by HR&ID Office Director A. V. Ruzaev. He noted that according to the decision of the CP, work on the document started at the end of 2016, members of the working group under CP Chairman, members of the STC JINR, leaders of national groups of the JINR Member States participated in it. The last edition of the Regulation will be prepared until May, and after that, the working draft and major documents (orders, regulations, and rules) will be publicly available on the JINR website. In November, the document will be presented at the CP session.

The drafting process of the Regulation on scientific-research and educational programmes of cooperation with institutes and universities of the JINR Member States was reported by JINR Chief Scientific Secretary A. S. Sorin. It is planned to discuss the document in October 2019 at the meeting of the Working Group under CP Chairman.

R. V. Jolos, S. N. Nedelko, S. N. Dmitriev, I. N. Meshkov, M. G. Itkis commented on presented information. JINR Director V. A. Matveev summed up the result of discussions.

Evgeny Molchanov, JINR Weekly Newspaper