On 7 – 8 June 2018, the regular meeting of the international Machine Аdvisory Сommittee (NICA MAC) on the NICA project was held in the Veksler and Baldin Laboratory of High Energy Physics JINR. The work of the meeting was aimed at an expert assessment of the progress on the NICA mega science project, its current status and receiving recommendations for its further implementation.

M. Steck, JINR Director Academician V.A. Matveev, JINR Vice-Director B.Yu. Sharkov and JINR Vice-Director, Director of the Veksler and Baldin Laboratory of High Energy Physics V.D. Kekelidze delivered their welcome speeches at the opening of the meeting. After that, the report “Introduction: NICA status and tasks, new results, session content” was carried by I.N. Meshkov, and A.V. Butenko shared information about the 55th run of the Nuclotron. H.G. Khodzhibagiyan told the participants of the meeting about the status of fabrication and test results of superconducting magnets. Moreover, on the first day of the meeting, reports on the booster for the NICA collider, on injection, acceleration, deceleration, and extraction of particles were made. V.B. Reva and A.O. Sidorin dedicated their reports to the cooling systems.

The second day of the MAC meeting was also rich in reports. Its programme was devoted to the infrastructure and detectors of the NICA collider. That is why reports on the control system, the NICA complex infrastructure were provided, and the topic of stochastic cooling systems was again mentioned in the reports by V. Lebedev and T. Katayama. V.M. Golovatyuk reported on the status of the MPD and the BM@N experiments.

The MAC meeting was concluded by the excursion to the collider construction site, after which comments and suggestions for further project development were formulated, the MAC resolution was submitted and proposals of topics for the next session were made.

“The progress of the project was approved,” V.D. Kekelidze commented on the results of the meeting at the PAC session for journalists. “The experts were impressed with the progress in development of our accelerator complex. But there are always great challenges in great affairs. Such challenges have been highlighted. They require concentration of efforts of our accelerator specialists, so that we do not fall behind the schedule and complete all the work on time.”

Photos by Igor Lapenko, JINR Scientific Information Department