On 10 November 2022, the second workshop of directors of JINR Information Centres (IC) was held on the sidelines of the JEMS-21 Training Programme at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research. Heads of already operating ICs presented detailed information about their work and shared plans for future.

The geography of participants of the meeting was extensive: representatives of universities of Arkhangelsk, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Rostov-on-Don, Tomsk, Tula, Vladikavkaz, and Vladivostok gathered in Dubna. Representatives of ICs in Armenia, Bulgaria, and Egypt joined the meeting via video conference. Representatives of scientific groups of South Africa, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam who expressed interest in creating information centres in their countries, attended the meeting.

Participants of the workshop discussed goals and tasks of ICs, formal aspects of activities of infocentres, particularities of cooperation on educational programmes of the JINR University Centre (UC JINR), role and capabilities of ICs in coordination of scientific cooperation between universities and the Institute, the significance of infocentres in the development of international cooperation.

Head of the JINR International Cooperation Department Dmitry Kamanin reminded about the first meeting of the ICs Directors that took place a year ago. “This instrument called information centres grows with us. We already have a notion of what the information centre should look like, but the final polishing requires joint efforts,” he stressed.

Daniyal Israpilov, Director of the IC at Kamchatka State University (KamSU), said that 1,500 people attended events of the Сentre during the year. Online lectures and excursions for JINR employees were organized, as well as offline lectures of the Geophysical Survey of RAS and the Institute of Cosmophysical Research and Radio Wave Propagation FEB RAS. Meetings with physics teachers and school principals were held at the IC. The School on Physics was working based on the IC. Popular science lectures were given to schoolchildren, and 12 students were selected to visit JINR in November as a result of the Olympiad. Students-programmers of the University had training at JINR. Besides, JINR and KamSU signed agreements for inclinometric and ecological studies. Thanks to the educational activities of the Infocentre, the University opened the Physics Teacher Speciality.

Alexandra Reguzova, Director of the Infocentre in Vladivostok, said that offline and online lectures by JINR employees were held during the year, off-site events were held. Nine lectures were recorded for the Znanie (lit. “Knowledge”) Society with the participation of JINR scientists. In total, one thousand people took part in the events. Physics teachers from Primorsky Krai attended the JINR training programme. Students of the Far Eastern Federal University (FEFU) underwent training at the Laboratory of Information Technologies and participated in an engineering workshop at UC. The work of the IC resulted in the increase in the recruitment of physics students. In September, an educational programme on medical physics was opened at FEFU in collaboration with JINR.

Nelli Pukhaeva, Director of the JINR Information Centre in the South of Russia, the experience of which served as a role model for the formation of the infocentre format, spoke about a unique experience of establishing a scientific laboratory based on the North Ossetian State University. She shared experience of scientific collaboration with JINR, primarily, in the framework of the MPD Collaboration of the NICA Collider.

Andrey Goshev, IC Head at Northern (Arctic) Federal University (NArFU), said that despite the fact that the IC had just started working, holding of events in the Infocentre provided increase in a number of applications for natural sciences.

JINR curator of the Infocentre at the Academy of Scientific Research and Technology (Egypt) Wael Badawy, Head of the IC at Yerevan State University (Armenia) Armen Tumasyan, and Head of the JINR Centre at Sofia University (Bulgaria) Dimitar Mladenov spoke about the state of the art at the ICs in the JINR Member States.

Press Secretary of the Joint Institute Natalya Zaikina presented a report on the media-activity of the Infocentres and recommendations for their cooperation with the JINR Press Office. For example, this year JINR activity as a co-organizer of the International Year of Basic Sciences for Sustainable Development is substantial. It would be useful to spread this information through IC efforts on regional sites.

An intensive programme of discussing the experience and topical issues of the Infocentres’ operation continued the diverse discussion, which had started the day before at the round table on cooperation between universities and JINR. Head of the JINR UC Department of Development of Educational Programmes Yuri Panebrattsev dedicated his speech to organization of work with an educational platform edu.jinr.ru. Chief Researcher at the Laboratory of Theoretical Physics Gheorghe Stratan spoke about his exhibition on rare books “From Copernicus to Newton”.

“There is no doubt that the IC network will expand in the nearest future,” Dmitry Kamanin summed up. He emphasized that organizations, which had opened infocentres, note the efficiency of this instrument both in popularisation of science and developing contacts with JINR.