On 16 June, at the invitation of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the city of Dubna, JINR delegation headed by Vice-Director RAS Corresponding Member Prof. V. D. Kekelidze took part in a meeting of the Council of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation on industrial development and competitiveness of Russian economy. This time the meeting was devoted to the questions of cooperation of scientific and industrial organizations with a view to developing competitive high-tech products.

Opening the meeting, the Council Chairman and President of the association “Rosspetsmash” Konstantin Babkin emphasized that Dubna hosted the visiting meeting not by chance. Being a unique place with great concentration of superior intellectual potential and high-tech enterprises, Dubna is an example of successful development of the territory and a model worth emulating at the national level.

In his brief overview on the Institute’s relationship with industry, Prof. Vladimir Kekelidze described the cooperation in the framework of the mega-science project “NICA Complex” in such areas as superconductivity technologies to produce superconducting fast-circulating magnets, unique cryogenics, HTSC-magnet-based inductive energy storage, composite materials for building ultra-light support structures. During the discussion, Vladimir Kekelidze highlighted that big basic science provides a unique opportunity to acquire new knowledge and technologies whose importance today cannot be properly realized and measured. By way of example, Vladimir Kekelidze recalled Michael Faraday’s discovery of electromagnetic induction 190 years ago, which began a new technological era.

On 17 June, participants of the meeting visited the VBLHEP site. VBLHEP Deputy Director for science Yu. K. Potrebenikov briefed guests on the history of the Laboratory and on the progress in work on the mega-science project “NICA Complex”. Guests also visited a factory for producing and testing superconducting magnets.

Following the visit, the guests were impressed with the high technical level of the ongoing work and wished the multinational staff of the Institute creative successes and new big discoveries.