Yesterday, the 6th SPD Collaboration Meeting started at Samara National Research University named after Academician S. P. Korolev. The event brought together more than 150 scientists and specialists. A Workshop on Information Technologies in Natural Sciences will take place alongside the meeting.

Welcoming the participants of the event, Vice-Rector for Research and Development Andrey Prokofiev highlighted that the meeting would become the next stage of long-standing and fruitful cooperation between JINR and Samara University.

Alexey Guskov, Co-Leader of the SPD Collaboration (JINR), presented the news of the collaboration and the results achieved since the last meeting, which took place at the Laboratory of High Energy Physics at JINR in April this year. The SPD Collaboration keeps updating the Technical Design Report of the SPD Experiment (SPD TDR) that was presented for the first time at the 57th meeting of the Programme Advisory Committee for Particle Physics of JINR. One of the main stages of work in this direction is the search for suppliers of electronic equipment necessary for the second phase of the experiment. It is expected that an updated version of SPD TDR will be ready by the end of the year. According to the recommendations made at the 58th meeting of the JINR Programme Advisory Committee for Particle Physics, a Detector Advisory Committee (DAC) for a thorough review of the SPD TDR will continue its work after the approval of its new members at the end of this year.

Memoranda of understanding with 11 scientific centres have been signed. One more memorandum with another organization is prepared to be signed. The SPD Collaboration is constantly expanding. As a result, it currently includes more than 300 representatives from 14 countries.

SPD Collaboration Board Chair Egle Tomasi-Gustaffson noted the increasing number of reports and materials on the experiment presented at conferences. Open scientific grants contribute to the active development of the SPD Collaboration. Moreover, the SPD Experiment has been included in the programme of the new Seven-Year Plan for the Development of JINR 2024-2030 and the JINR Postdoctoral Programme. Professor Egle Tomasi-Gustaffson also introduced Armen Tumasyan (A. I. Alikhanyan National Science Laboratory), who was elected SPD Collaboration Board Deputy Chair at the last collaboration meeting in April this year, to the participants of the meeting.

During the current meeting, its participants will discuss the progress in the preparation of the detector’s subsystems, electronics, and software of the experiment. Special attention will be paid to the consideration of the SPD physics programme. Alongside the event, the Workshop on Information Technologies in Natural Sciences is organized.