On 21 October 2022, an international seminar “Study of matter through kaons and baryons” dedicated to the 75th anniversary of JINR Vice-Director, Leader of the NICA Megascience Project Vladimir Dimitrievich Kekelidze was held in the Conference Hall of the Laboratory of High Energy Physics. On this day, his students and colleagues addressed many warm words to him. Presented reports provided a lot of information about experiments and projects led by Vladimir Kekelidze in different years on behalf of JINR.

JINR Director RAS Academician Grigory Trubnikov presented Vladimir Kekelidze with a high award, the Rosatom medal “For contribution to international cooperation in the nuclear industry”. “With the enthusiasm of a 25-30-year-old person, Vladimir Kekelidze leads and organizes work on the largest project in the territory of not only the Russian Federation but also probably all the Member States of the Institute. We admire his scientific and human tone,” he highlighted. “He is a great example for the generation of young scientists determined to achieve bright scientific results, leave their mark on science,” Grigory Trubnikov noted saying that Vladimir Kekelidze is a wonderful example of how a scientist’s career could develop.

In his speech, JINR Vice-Director Latchesar Kostov indicated that Vladimir Kekelidze made an invaluable contribution to such fields of modern experimental physics as the study of elementary particles, processes of the production and decay of hadrons, and much more. “Not only have you managed to achieve outstanding results, but you have become a symbol of the Laboratory of High Energy Physics!” he said.

Continuing this thought, VBLHEP Acting Director Andrey Butenko admitted that probably there was not a single person at JINR or in Russia involved in the physical work on the preparation of NICA who would not know Vladimir Dimitrievich.

In addition, at the ceremonial part of the seminar, MLIT Director Vladimir Korenkov, VBLHEP Deputy Director for Scientific Work Alexander Sorin, NRNU MEPhI Rector Vladimir Shevchenko, a chief researcher of the Institute of Nuclear Physics and Engineering of NRNU MEPhI Anatoly Petrukhin congratulated Vladimir Kekelidze. Head of the VBLHEP Physics Division Dmitry Peshekhonov congratulated Vladimir Dimitrievich on behalf of the VBLHEP team.

SINP MSU Director Eduard Boos thanked Vladimir Kekelidze for many years of support provided to the cooperation, in particular, in the field of construction of NICA detectors. Congratulations by the Nuclear Regulatory Agency of Bulgaria and Belarusian colleagues from JSC SOL instruments, the organization involved in the LHC and NICA experiments were delivered at the seminar.

Vladimir Dimitrievich’s decisive contribution to the formation of the scientific programme at NICA was highlighted. Thanks to his scientific authority and powers of persuasion, consistency and perseverance in achieving results, a large-scale international collaboration working and expanding despite all the difficulties has been gathered. “Only such a great, brave, active person, who never stops, could lead the project and bring it to its logical end, to the first physical experiments,” Grigory Trubnikov said.

At the seminar, speakers delivered a number of scientific reports. RAS Academician, a VBLHEP chief researcher Igor Meshkov, who spoke about the history of the idea and creation steps of the NICA Megascience Project, was among them. A leading researcher of the Relativistic Nuclear Physics Laboratory of Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute of National Research Centre “Kurchatov Institute” (PNPI NRC KI) Victor Riabov (MPD), Head of the DLNP Department of Colliding Beam Physics Alexey Guskov (SPD), Head of the Department of the Baryonic Matter Investigations at the VBLHEP Nuclotron Mikhail Kapishin (“From physics at HERA to physics at BM@N“) dedicated their reports to the three main detectors of the Complex. Chairman of the JINR Programme Advisory Committee for Particle Physics Itzhak Tserruya (Weizmann Institute, Israel) presented his report “Dileptons at NICA: Challenges and Opportunities” online. Evgueni Goudzovski (University of Birmingham, UK) spoke about challenges in experiments with kaons via videoconference. Peter Hristov (CERN) spoke about multi quark states.