27 April marks the Freedom Day of the Republic of South Africa (RSA), an Associate Member of the Joint Institute. The JINR-RSA cooperation, which started from exchanging the first scientific visits in 1993, has expanded into the associate membership of South Africa in the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in 2005. Joint work with the RSA is currently being conducted on 17 topics of the JINR Topical Plan dealing with each of the research main areas at the Institute.

One of the recent results of the JINR-RSA cooperation was the First JINR Prize for 2020. A scientific group with the participation of researchers from South Africa were awarded it for a series of works “Experimental study and multiscale modeling of latent tracks structure in radiation resistant dielectrics”. South African scientists presented reports at the round table on applied research and innovation at NICA, which was held at JINR in September 2021. The RSA-JINR Summer School was held online from 24 January to 4 February 2022. That was the third RSA-JINR Physics School organized by the Southern African Institute for Nuclear Technology and Sciences (SAINTS) at iThemba LABS. This year, 30 students from various universities of the country took part in the School. The School held an online workshop that included classes on the basics of nuclear electronics and several online laboratory works on the study of spontaneous fission and gamma spectroscopy. Nowadays, the JINR Information Centre based on the country’s leading scientific organization iThemba LABS is being organized.

The Directorate of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research congratulates South African colleagues and partners, as well as their relatives, on the Freedom Day of the Republic of South Africa and wishes them good health, happiness, well-being, luck, and new professional successes for the benefits of science and progress!