The JINR Weekly Newspaper continues its column dedicated to the 65th JINR anniversary in which staff members from the JINR Member States whose lives are closely related to the Institute answer the questions of the Newspaper. In the newly published article, Wael Mahmoud Badawy, Head of the national group of the Arab Republic of Egypt in JINR, a senior researcher at the Frank Laboratory of Neutron Physics, speaks about the history of his cooperation with the Joint Institute.

I first came to JINR in 2008 as a postgraduate student of the MSU Soil Science Faculty majoring in radioecology and ecotoxicology. I remember my tremendous impression of the Institute and communication with wonderful specialists working here. After completing my postgraduate study and defending the candidate’s dissertation, I returned to the Atomic Energy Agency in Cairo and continued active cooperation with colleagues from JINR in the framework of joint projects with Egypt on the study of soils of the Delta and Valley of the Nile River. My mentors Marina Vladimirovna Frontasieva, until recently the Head of the FLNP Neutron Activation Analysis Department, and Hussein El-Samman, Professor at the University of Menofia, greatly contributed to my professional development and implementation of joint scientific projects. They gave me an opportunity to take an active part in joint scientific activity. Thanks to that I gained considerable experience and came to work at the Laboratory of Neutron Physics in 2016 as a permanent employee.

I am very grateful to the Director of the Laboratory Valery Nikolaevich Shvetsov who believed in me and provided me with an opportunity to become a member of the big international family of the Institute. Nowadays, I work at the NAA group headed by Andrey Yurievich Dmitriev where we not only continue doing research in the fields of ecology but also master new analytical and statistical methods and approaches in the study of archaeological artefacts. Moreover, I am the head of the national group of Egyptian employees in the Institute and the coordinator for cooperation between JINR and the Arab Atomic Energy Agency in Tunisia.

Recently I took part in the opening ceremony of the JINR Information Centre in Cairo. Now, under the auspices of Dmitry Vladimirovich Kamanin, Head of the International Cooperation Department, we implement plans for opening an information centre in the headquarters of the Arab Atomic Energy Agency in Tunisia. I am sure that the countries of the Middle East and North Africa have great potential for participation in scientific activities of the Institute, and I am ready to make every effort to ensure that many promising projects with the participation of talented scientists from Arab countries appear at JINR. In this jubilee year, I would like to wish the Institute prosperity, scientific breakthroughs, outstanding achievements, and preservation of its unique place in the international scientific community!

Wael Badawy, Head of the national group
of the Arab Republic of Egypt in JINR