JINR Director Grigory Trubnikov presented the main results and key directions of the Institute’s development in his report at the current session of the Committee of Plenipotentiaries of the Governments of the JINR Member States in Bulgaria. In his speech, Grigory Trubnikov paid particular attention to JINR’s flagship projects, the progress on which has so far amounted to 72%.

Before his report on the implementation of priority projects of the Seven-Year Plan for the Development of JINR, the JINR Director congratulated Scientific Leader of the Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions JINR, RAS Academician Yuri Oganessian on receiving the UNESCO-Russia Mendeleev International Prize in the Basic Sciences.

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“Despite obvious difficulties caused by the pandemic, it was quite a good and efficient year for the Institute. We have returned to the pre-COVID level of publication activities. Many projects are being developed in strict accordance with plans, some have objective delays. The most important thing for us this year was to preserve the health of employees, for which the JINR Directorate did its utmost in this respect,” the JINR Director noted in his report.

Among the main results of JINR, Academician Trubnikov noted an increase in the capacity of the Superheavy Element Factory. Its preparatory work is underway for experiments on the synthesis of elements 119 and 120. The scientific infrastructure of the SHE Factory is being improved: the U400 and U400M accelerators are being developed, a new DC-140 cyclotron complex is being constructed for applied research in the fields of track membranes and materials science.

The number of applications for experiments within the IBR-2 user programme is growing. Modernisation of the reactor’s spectrometers is planned for 2022. JINR employees are developing an ambitious and innovative project on building a new neutron source in the FLNP in the second half of the 2030s, which should become a world record holder in intensity.

As part of the implementation of the Baikal-GVD neutrino telescope project, its participants are planning to install two more clusters during the upcoming 2022 expedition. Thus, there will be almost 3,000 modules. Active data collection and processing are currently underway. The Director of the Institute also informed that preliminarily several candidates for astrophysical neutrinos with the energy of more than 100 TeV were registered for the period 2018-2020.

As for information technologies, JINR focuses on the advanced development of the IT infrastructure of the JINR Multifunctional Information and Computing Complex (MICC) in the MLIT JINR. A bright initiative in this area is the international interlaboratory project of MLIT, FLNR, and BLTP aimed to create a quantum algorithm for calculating the limits of nuclear stability and the limits of the periodic table.

Construction work in the NICA megascience project has been completed by 85%. Grigory Trubnikov highlighted the technical launch of the Booster-Nuclotron channel as a key result. In September 2021, a beam of iron ions obtained at the Booster of the NICA complex was successfully transported through the channel.

The high quality of the Institute’s scientific infrastructure was marked with the recommendation to include the NICA complex, the Baikal-GVD neutrino telescope, the SHE Factory, and the IBR-2 reactor in the EUROLABS network and the ESFRI Roadmap 2021.

The Institute’s Director also noted the wide participation of JINR employees and research teams in the ALICE, CMS, ATLAS, NA61, and NA64 experiments at CERN.

JINR is actively developing its educational activity. In particular, the JINR University Centre continues actively holding the International Remote Student Training (INTEREST) for students from all over the world. The Physics and Mathematics Lyceum named after Academician V. G. Kadyshevsky was opened on the initiative of JINR. The Dubna-Darmstadt (D²) annual Summer School in Germany, a joint project of JINR and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), is scheduled for the summer of 2022.

“Without changing the directions of its scientific activities, the Institute takes a focus on the search for new goals in the fields of particle physics and nuclear physics, relying on international global initiatives in solving the problems of sustainable human development. Now, it undoubtedly includes research in the fields of climate change and ecology, new energetics, Big Data, biomedicine, and areas related to life sciences. It should be a modern, international, ambitious scientific programme”, Grigory Trubnikov summed up.

“The first and the most important task for us in the next two years is to form a super ambitious scientific programme and to expand the geography of the JINR Member States and partner countries. Besides, the Institute focuses on attracting talented and professional staff and making the HR policy flexible. We have to respond to the economic challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, various digital tools are being actively implemented in administrative management, procurement activity, finance, HR management, and there are already some results”, the JINR Director said.

Close cooperation with the Republic of Serbia has been intensified. In this regard, representatives of the Government and the relevant ministry of this country have developed the Roadmap on cooperation to change the status of Serbia in the Joint Institute from an Associate Member to a full-fledged Member State. The signing of the document is planned in the programme of the CP session.

Grigory Trubnikov also highlighted the creation of a comfortable and attractive social environment in Dubna among the priority areas of development. Therefore, the Institute and the FMBA of Russia have signed a Roadmap for the broad modernisation of Medical Unit No. 9; a new model of the Dubna State University is being discussed.