1 September marks a national holiday – the Independence Day, or Mustaqillik – of the Republic of Uzbekistan, a Member State of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research.

The Republic of Uzbekistan was part of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research within the USSR since its creation. In June 1992, the Republic of Uzbekistan joined JINR as an independent Member State. Cooperation has been active during all the years of the Institute’s existence.

During the entire period of cooperation, over 300 qualified specialists, including over 20 Doctors of Sciences and 100 Candidates of Sciences, have been trained at JINR for the Republic of Uzbekistan.

At present, the Joint Institute cooperates with 9 Uzbek research institutes and universities on 14 topics of the JINR Topical Plan. The national scientific centres of Uzbekistan, together with JINR, are part of the collaborations of large-scale international projects.

Frank Laboratory of Neutron Physics JINR is involved in the creation of an experimental station at a neutron source and cyclotron in Uzbekistan. In 2020, through the efforts of a joint working group of the JINR FLNP and the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Uzbekistan, an experimental neutron imaging (neutron radiography and tomography) facility was designed, built, and launched on the basis of the WWR-SM reactor at the INP AS RUz. The facility is designed for interdisciplinary applied research in engineering and plant science, geophysics, astrophysics, archaeology, and palaeontology.

Over the past two years, a number of high-level meetings have taken place with the participation of the Embassy of the Republic of Uzbekistan in the Russian Federation and the leadership of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Uzbekistan. Scientific seminars and conferences are jointly organized. The partnership between JINR and Uzbekistan is developing, including in such an advanced field as the ARIADNA applied research complex at NICA.

The Directorate of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research congratulates colleagues and partners from Uzbekistan, as well as their relatives, on Independence Day and wishes them good health, happiness, well-being, luck, and new professional successes for the benefits of science and progress.