4-9 September 2016, Kazan:
The VIII International Symposium on Exotic Nuclei on the basis of the Kazan Federal University.

Right after the end of the satellite school “Contemporary nuclear physics and nuclear medicine” ) there was the International symposium on one of the most significant and dynamically developing directions of nuclear physics – the physics of exotic nuclei – «EXON 2016».

The Symposium organizers are the five largest scientific centres, where this direction has been successfully developed: JINR, the GANIL National Centre (France), the RIKEN Research Institute (Japan), the GSI Helmholtz Centre For Heavy Ion Research (Germany), the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory (Michigan, USA) and the Kazan Federal University.

The Co-Chairmen of the Symposium Organizing Committee were the leading scientists of these five world-known scientific centres: Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Yu.Ts. Oganessian (JINR), Professor M. Levitovich (GANIL), H. Enio (RIKEN), H. Stöcker (GSI), B. Sherrill (USA) and the Kazan Federal University.

The official opening of the Symposium, at which representatives of the city administration, the administration of the Kazan Federal University and that of JINR made their speeches, was held on 5 September at the Kazan Federal University.

About 170 scientists took part in the Symposium “EXON 2016”, which took place on 5-9 September 2016. Most of them are the leading scientists in the field of nuclear physics in Brazil, Vietnam, Germany, India, Iran, China, USA, Finland, France, Switzerland, the Republic of South Africa and Japan.

The main objectives of the Symposium were discussing the results of the latest experiments on the synthesis and the study of properties of new superheavy nuclei, on which the panel discussion regarding the research programme for the next working period was based. The scientific programme of the Symposium included reports from the invited speakers on priority directions in the physics of exotic nuclei and on new projects of the largest accelerator complexes and experimental facilities. Furthermore, round tables were convened where issues of cooperation in the fields of fundamental physics and applied research were discussed.

The distinctive feature of this traditional scientific event is that it is obligatory to organize the Symposium and the School on the basis of universities involving students and post-graduates and also in exotic cities of the JINR Member State which promotes holding the Symposium – Russia: Foros (1991), Baikal (2001), Petergof (2004), Khanty-Mansiysk (2006), Sochi (2009), Vladivostok (2012), Kaliningrad (2014), Kazan (2016).

About 80 oral reports and 40 poster presentations were delivered in total. All of them will be published as a special issue of the World Scientific Publishing.

Based on the materials by: Penionzhkevich Yu.E., Nikitin S. I. and the press office of the Kazan Federal University, JINR International Cooperation Department.