On 29 April, an extraordinary meeting of the Programme Advisory Committee for Condensed Matter Physics was held as a video conference. Experts of the Committee were supposed to set the priorities of 12 topics and projects, which are under implementation in the Institute’s laboratories. The decision to hold the extraordinary meeting was taken at the previous 53rd PAC meeting. What was the reason? Whether it is necessary to decide on the priorities of the projects as fast as possible or the format of ordinary meetings does not allow participants to do it – we learned it from Chairman of the Committee Denesh Nagy.

– Evaluation of reports and offers on topics and projects approved for completion in a particular year, as well as proposals for new topics and projects, has been a standard task of all the PAC meetings for many years. Of course, it happened several times that themes and/or projects did not correspond to fairly strict requirements of our PAC and were denied or returned to the authors of the projects for deeper study.

However, other themes and/or projects – and this is the majority – were approved, usually with the highest priority, which does not really make sense since this cannot be the basis for prioritisation. As far as until recently directorates of the laboratories guaranteed the PAC in all previous cases that there would be enough finance allocated for approved themes and projects, since 2017, experts of our Programme Committee have not been indicating the level of their priorities. Of course, we will continue evaluating themes and projects (at summer meetings, as a rule), however, in January 2021, the JINR Directorate asked us (just like two other PACs) to assign all projects within the competence of our Committee to one of three categories.

The A category includes perfect projects that should be fully financed by adequate resources and encouraged to continue and expand their impact. The B category includes good projects but having some drawbacks. They should be financed with clear recommendations of what aspects should be improved. The C category includes good projects that demonstrate relatively low performance. This is obviously a task that does not fit our ordinary assessment scheme. The extraordinary meeting has been organized to launch this priority-setting process that will end at a regular meeting of the Programme Committee at the end of June 2021.

– Preliminary assessments of reviewers did not match for some projects. Have the PAC members agreed on all the projects?

– I believe it should be so: it is absolutely fine that two reviewers with different experiences consider a report on a project differently. The PAC members have fully or preliminarily agreed on 75 % of projects. As for the other 25%, the agreement is still under review (these reports were returned to the authors for completion), but I am sure that we will achieve full agreement on these projects at the June meeting. All members of the Programme Committee understand that our task is not just to criticise but also to help the project’s team become better and more effective.

– Professor Mikula noted that it is difficult to discuss radiobiological topics that are far from neutron physics. E. A. Krasavin reminded us that he had long been proposing to organize a special PAC for life sciences. How do you and the members of the Committee feel about this idea?

– Indeed, radiation biology and astrobiology in many ways are not only far from neutron physics, which is undoubtedly in the focus of the PAC’s attention, but also from other important techniques of condensed matter physics such as Raman spectroscopy, fast heavy ion irradiation, or positron annihilation. In fact, the idea to establish a new PAC for radiation biology and astrobiology has been recently discussed. Nevertheless, I would advise being accurate at this stage. It is necessary to keep in mind formal and substantive arguments in this regard.The formal argument is that the three PACs correspond to three major research fields of JINR defined by the Charter of the Joint Institute: “The main fields of research at the Institute are elementary particle physics, nuclear physics, and physics of condensed states of matter using nuclear methods.” Changing the Charter will be a complex process affecting not only the Committee of Plenipotentiaries but also the governments of the Member States or even the parliaments. However, it is even more important that there is a significant caveat: at the moment, neither the staff nor scientific scales of radiation biology and astrobiology are not comparable to high energy physics, nuclear physics, and condensed matter physics. That is why I suppose that the bulk of the PAC members will support my opinion: we should ask our colleagues in the fields of biology and astrobiology to be patient and look at how these fields will develop in the near future.Nevertheless, it is absolutely right that our PAC is not enough competent in the fields of radiation biology and astrobiology. In this regard, it is very important to significantly strengthen the PAC membership. This will be the task for the Directorate and the JINR Scientific Council.

– In the open part of the extraordinary meeting, G. V. Trubnikov warmly welcomed the Committee’s members and highly evaluated their work. How do you assess the interaction with new members of the Institute’s Directorate?

– It is a simple question. Firstly, I am very grateful to Grigory Trubnikov for his kind words. He and the updated JINR Directorate have presented a new, fresh, and dynamic style of work corresponding to scientific, technological, and social expectations of the beginning of the 21st century. In my opinion, the PAC for Condensed Matter Physics has not changed in many ways for the last four years. That is why I am absolutely convinced that our interaction with the JINR Directorate will be smooth, harmonious, and effective.

– Although several members of the Committee did not take part in the extraordinary meeting, everyone who did was very active, in my opinion. Especially, Professor H. Fuess (ESS, Sweden). How do you assess the efficiency of work in this format and is it possible to continue it?

– Although video conferences will never replace in-person meetings, they have some advantages though, and when the pandemic will end, we will use them. One of the few benefits of the pandemic was that we learned to use these tools. Professor H. Fuess was probably the most active (and critical) participant in the video conference, but many other PAC members also took an active part. I do not think that the video conference format will drastically affect the efficiency of our work. A remote poster session of young JINR scientists is planned for the July meeting, which will also take place as a video conference. I am very afraid that the next meeting of the Scientific Council in September 2021 will have to be organized in the same way. Maybe sometime in 2022, we will be allowed to meet in person. I am looking forward to it.

Olga Tarantina