The 12th Joint Coordination Committee on RSA-JINR cooperation was held along with the 3rd South Africa–JINR Symposium „Few to Many Body Systems: Models, Methods and Applications“ at the Stellenbosch University (RSA) on 27-28 November 2012.

 The JINR delegation was headed by JINR Vice-Director Mikhail Itkis, the South African delegation was headed by Deputy Director General of the Department of Science and Technology Thomas Auf der Heyde.

The Committee appreciated achievements of development of cooperation and an increase of the number of running joint projects, and therefore the South African side decided to increase contribution of the RSA to JINR next year.

Discussion of the possibility of full participation of South African Republic in the NICA/MPD project, which is the JINR priority project continued at the Committee meeting. South Africa intends to continue to support joint research projects focused on some of the scientific and technological aspects of the NICA-MPD project. However, direct funding of NICA/MPD requires significant additional funds, which initiated a preparation of a special Memorandum of Understanding.

The Committee attended traditionally much attention to educational issues. Recently, there has been a significant amount of MSc and PhD students from the RSA at JINR, who have implement joint projects. An overview of the International student practice for students from the RSA, which was held in September 2012, was given in a positive way and preparation of the Practice 2013 was launched.

Due to the fact that cooperation has reached a high level and most administrative matters do not require constant attention, on the initiative of RSA, it was decided to hold meetings of the Joint Coordination Committee once a year, so the next meeting is scheduled for November 2013.