Today, Yerevan State University (Armenia) has launched a School for students and young scientists on physics at the NICA Accelerator Complex at JINR, which will last from 6 to 17 February. The School is a part of an intensive Training programme in High Energy Physics, which is organized from January to April 2023 within the framework of cooperation of the A. I. Alikhanyan National Science Laboratory (AANL, Yerevan Physics Institute) and Yerevan State University at the YSU faculty of Physics.

Not only university students, but also all young people interested in this topic had the opportunity to become participants of the Training programme. Those of them who successfully complete the course will have the opportunity to work as part of research groups of AANL and YSU, and international scientific collaborations.

JINR scientists present intensive training programs on introduction to the physics of the NICA Collider and data processing methods in High Energy Physics. According to Armen Tumasyan, Head of the JINR Information Centre in Yerevan, among the lecturers of the School are Alexey Aparin, a senior researcher at the Laboratory of High Energy Physics JINR, and a leading software engineer at VBLHEP JINR Grigory Nigmatkulov (NRNU MEPhI), who will talk about the MPD experiment at the NICA. The participation of a third JINR scientist with a short training course “Identification of particles using machine learning methods” is also planned. The attendance of specialists from Dubna is organized through the JINR Information Centre in Armenia.

In addition to the NICA Accelerator Complex, the three-month Training programme includes the study of various aspects of such megascience experiments as CMS at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN and Belle II at the KEK Laboratory (Japan). Lectures about Belle II will be given by AANL Professor Norair Akopov and senior researcher of AANL and YSU Gevorg Karyan; Doctor of Physics and Mathematics Alexandre Nikitenko (NRC KI – ITEP), MSU and AANL leading researcher Olga Kodolova, and AANL and YSU leading researcher Armen Tumasyan will introduce the work of CMS to the audience. AANL Professor Hrachya Asatryan will speak about the Matinyan Centre for Theoretical Physics at the A. I. Alikhanyan National Science Laboratory.

Lectures will be followed by practical exercises to consolidate the acquired knowledge and to understand their application. The programme as a whole is aimed at motivating participants to start or continue research activity in high energy physics with basic understanding of the field and being familiar with advanced experimental methods and their computational environment.