Interim Spokesperson of the MPD Collaboration Victor Riabov talks about milestones of the three-day Collaboration Meeting of the MPD Experiment at the NICA Facility. The meeting took place at the Veksler and Baldin Laboratory of High Energy Physics on 25-27 April 2022. The ninth event of the series was held in the hybrid format. More than 140 scientists took part in the event in total. More than 60 of them participated in-person.

Participants of the meeting discussed the state of the art and the schedule of the MPD experimental facility construction, the status of the collaboration’s computing and software infrastructure, as well as the results of physical analyses conducted by members of different MPD Physics Working Groups. They also discussed problems related to the recent events in the world, sanctions, and restrictions. It was highlighted that despite the difficulties of the current situation (termination of contracts and supply chain disruption with Western companies, suspension of the JINR-CERN collaboration), as well as the suspended participation of institutes of Poland and the Czech Republic in the collaboration, completion of main work on the construction and launch of the experimental facility is planned for the end of 2023. This year, the main work is going to be related to the launch of the central superconducting magnet and precision measurements of the magnetic field.

At the meeting, it was noted that the first collaborative article will be published in the European Physical Journal A (EPJ A) this summer. By the time the MPD facility is launched, the collaboration plans to publish the second article dedicated to the description of the experimental facility, research programme, and the expected physical results at the first beams. At its meeting, the Institutional Board welcomed a new member of the MPD Collaboration – the Institute of Physics and Technology of the Mongolian Academy of Sciences. The collaborative meeting was held in a constructive and friendly atmosphere.