On 12 October 2018, a ceremonial opening of the Information Centre of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in the North Ossetian State University was held. Representatives of the JINR Directorate headed by JINR Vice-Director Richard Lednický, leaders of the JINR laboratories, leading scientists and representatives of the JINR Member States came to Vladikavkaz to participate in the event.

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Photos © Sputnik / Anna Kabisova

The JINR Information Centre opened (IC) on the basis of the NOSU Physics and Technology Department is designed as the centre for coordination of cooperation of the Joint Institute with regions in the South of Russia. The IC is aimed at popularization of the JINR activities and its achievements to attract the youth to science, including school aged. Operation of the Information Centre at NOSU had started in fact a day earlier, on 11 October, when the School for Young Scientists started. Students, post-graduates and young scientists from all over the South of Russia gathered in the reconstructed to the IC opening lecture hall of the NOSU Physical and Technological Institute. Specialists from leading universities of Armenia, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Kazakhstan, Romania, the RSA, and Serbia were the lecturers. The School was separated into four sections thus reflecting the existing areas of the NOSU–JINR cooperation: the NICA project, nanotechnologies, ecology, Virtual Laboratories. At the conclusion of the School, a group of young scientists from NOSU and the SPU (NCSMI) was invited to Dubna for participation in scientific training programmes.

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Photos © NOSU

The working programme of the IC opening ceremony on 12 October started with a round table with participation of ministers of education and health care as well as other leaders of the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania headed by Chairman of the Parliament of the Republic Alexey Machev, the NOSU Directorate headed by NOSU Rector Alan Ogoev and JINR representatives. Discussions of the round table were centered around opportunities for cooperation with JINR in the fields of development of natural science education and scientific–technological development of the Republic.

JINR Director Academician Victor Matveev welcomed participants of the event via the video broadcast. Online streamings from the DC-280 hall and the factory of supercoduncting magnets were complemented with a set of presentations about JINR, including a detailed report on the Institute’s educational programmes. The agenda was concluded with a round table dedicated to general issues of establishment and activities of JINR Information Centres in the JINR Member States.

JINR Vice-Director Richard Lednický who performed at the IC opening ceremony highlighted that this platform would be an effective mechanism of search for young talented scientists necessary for JINR to implement its megaprojects.

Photos © NOSU

“Our target is fundamental research. It will be impossible without training young staff. I hope that these centres will be spread throughout all JINR Member States. The fact that we have opened our first centre here is the merit of the University’s leaders who have shown their considerable efforts. You give birth to it. We hope that it will be a centre attracting young talents who will join science. This centre is a window to the world that will allow establishing contacts with the large international scientific community,” he said.

Chairman of the Parliament of the Republic Alexey Machnev expressed his firmness that these endeavours would be supported and similar Information Centres would be established in other cities as well.

Alan Ogoev, NOSU Rector: “Our cooperation has been continued for many years; graduates of the NOSU Physics and Technology Department already work on the basis of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research. I would like to note regular training programmes not only on physics but also on chemistry, biology, ecology. Today, we start to embed in the world and Russian agenda to contribute to it, to enhance the qualification.”

The opening of the JINR Information Centre in the South of Russia was preceded by working visits to JINR in 2017, participation of the extended NOSU delegation in the 6th JEMS training programme in April 2018, as well as the first successful participation of some young NOSU scientists in research conducted in the Institute.