On 9 December, an online seminar was held dedicated to a new field of activities of the Joint Institute, i.e. information centres (IC). Participants of the event considered the concept of IC JINR, the experience of creating the first IC in the South of Russia, opportunities to use UC training programmes for IC activities.

The seminar brought together more than 70 participants from universities and scientific organizations of Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Moldova, Mongolia, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, the RSA, Vietnam, as well as the international organization the Arab Atomic Energy Agency (AAEA). The seminar is the initiative of the Academy of Scientific Research and Technology (ASRT) of the Arab Republic of Egypt.

Opening the meeting, Richard Lednický welcomed participants on behalf of the JINR Directorate and noted in his talk that attraction of young scientists and training of highly qualified staff members are one of the main priorities of the Strategic Plan for the long-term development of JINR, and the creation of JINR Information Centres and expansion of the partner network of the Institute will definitely help achieve these goals.

ASRT President Mahmoud Sakr informed the audience about the upcoming opening of the JINR Information Centre on the ASRT platform. He noted that cooperation with JINR is significant for ASRT and for Egypt in general and characterized it as fairly successful and giving high practical results.

Berta Tueva, Vice-Rector for Science at the North Ossetian State University where the first JINR Information Centre was opened in October 2018, noted in her speech that the JINR IC at NOSU had become a point of attraction for professors and students, regular workshops and seminars take place there, including with the participation of JINR scientists. Last year, a scientific laboratory for applied research was opened on the IC JINR platform, and in 2020, it signed its first agreement with JINR on scientific cooperation.

Head of the JINR International Cooperation Department Dmitry Kamanin in his presentation presented to participants of the seminar the concept of information centres, their tasks and operation principles, as well as relevant successful practices of JINR.

Director of the IC in the south of Russia Nelli Pukhaeva made an overview of two years of the IC JINR operation at NOSU. In addition to attracting the youth and popularization of JINR activities, it allows coordinating the cooperation of JINR with organizations of the South of Russia, as well as developing contacts of NOSU and JINR with industrial enterprises. The active IC operation allowed organizing on its basis a regular IT School for young scientists, as well as creating a computing cluster that became a part of a wide JINR infrastructure and expanded the training opportunities for students. The established contacts allowed NOSU to join the implementation of the NICA mega-science project in the frames of the MPD collaboration. Moreover, NOSU has become a participant of the JINR educational project “Virtual Laboratory”; educational events and scientific visits of JINR specialists regularly take place on the IC basis, and participation of NOSU in large-scale scientific meetings of the Institute is organized. Sharing the experience of organizing the IC operation, Nelli Pukhaeva noted that every single realm of its activities requires its own coordinator. Nelli Pukhaeva said that the major achievement of the JINR IC at NOSU was the increased number of students studying at the Physics and Technology Department of the University, as well as the increased number of those who are going to devote their lives to science.

Director of the JINR University Centre presented educational opportunities of the UC that can be applied for Information Centres. He spoke about the new remote programme of JINR for students INTEREST, virtual excursions, the engineering training, and some other educational programmes of the Centre for young scientists. You can learn more about training programmes of the UC, which are exemplified by work with students from Egypt, and new initiatives in the video.

A leading specialist of the UC Department of Development of Educational Programmes Ksenia Klygina gave a talk at the seminar in which she spoke about the status of the educational project of JINR “Virtual Laboratory” and its introductory courses on nuclear physics, virtual and engineering workshops for students. According to Ksenia Klygina, it is planned to open a new field called Remote Labs in the future that will allow students to master working at two real physical facilities remotely: a gamma-ray spectrometer and a scintillator strobe.

Head of the UC Department of Development of Educational Programmes Yuri Panebrattsev told participants about opportunities of the edu.jinr.ru educational portal, which includes lectures by leading scientists on the topics of the JINR studies, virtual and VR excursions to the basic facilities, as well as reported on the prospects for cooperation with JINR Information Centres in all the presented fields. Participants of the seminar also discussed a possibility of translating lecture courses and other instruments into the languages of the Member States, as well as the necessity of the selection and targeted creation of training courses based on the specific interests of a particular country. It was noted that the use of a wide range of virtual education is available to all interested countries. However, it also requires training under the supervision of developers, and in this regard, the consolidating role of JINR Information Centres is particularly important.

The seminar continued with the discussion of the preparations for the opening of the JINR Information Centre in Cairo. ASRT Vice-President Gina El Feky chaired the discussion, so the Institute’s party invited participants of the JINR-ARE Coordination Committee, in particular, the Head of the National Group of Egypt in JINR Wael Badawy, Committee’s Secretary Yulia Polyakova, and a staff member of the Protocol Office of the ICD Elena Badawy.

Dmitry Kamanin commented on the milestones of the meeting for the Institute’s media, “We knew that it was necessary to hold such a seminar for a long time, especially taking into account that the opening of the Information Centre in the Academy of Scientific Research and Technology of Egypt was planned for April 2020. The idea was postponed for obvious reasons but our Egyptian friends made a plan of the preparation for a real opening in the frames of which it is planned to launch the online centre first and then gain experience to meet a JINR delegation next year not only with scissors and a red ribbon but also with particular issues and proposals for the organization of its operation. We should pay tribute to their consistency: the fact that the seminar has taken place is their merit. We just expanded the audience and invited those who were interested to learn more about how JINR finds the idea of Information Centres and what experience we have.

We were very pleased to get such an active response to our invitations to the seminar: there were more than 70 participants from 11 countries and from one international organization. The level of participants was more than solid: we saw guests representing the management of the Academy of Scientific Research and Technology of Egypt, guests from VINATOM (Vietnam), from the Far-Eastern Federal University, Kamchatka State University named after Vitus Bering, and, of course, from NOSU in Russia, the Institute of Nuclear Physics in Romania, the University of Novi Sad in Serbia, the Institute of Experimental and Applied Physics of the Czech Technical University, the Arab Atomic Energy Agency with the headquarters in Tunis. Unfortunately, not everyone registered for the event, so maybe we did not see all of the participants. Many of the participants have come to us earlier for the JEMS programme, we have discussed possible interest in opening Information Centres with some of them, and, apparently, this topic is still interesting.

It is already clear that the next JINR Information Centre will be opened in a few days in Cairo. The next one will be opened at the Sofia University and the Dean of its Physics Faculty Georgi Rainovski has also attended the seminar.

If we look further in the future, we should note that JINR does not set a task to open many information centres and, most importantly, simultaneously. It should be interesting for our partners, first of all. The Information Centre is quite a challenging matter. The most important thing about the Infocentre is an active person, or a group of active people, which is far better, who are ready to contribute their efforts and creative energy to this work, to be in touch with us. Figuratively speaking, JINR passes its flag to such people and will provide information support. We already have the first experience, and it is positive. So, we will move on!”

You can download some of the presentations made by participants below:

  D. V. Kamanin “Concept of JINR Information Centres”

 S. Z. Pakuliak about UC opportunities for Infocentres

 K. K. Klygina about the project “Virtual Laboratory”

 Yu. A. Panebrattsev “Open information and educational environment at JINR”