On 31 October 2018, the first Doors Open Day at the NICA complex was held in the Veksler and Baldin Laboratory of High Energy Physics. The event, which gathered 80 participants, was opened by Chairman of the Council of Young Scientists and Specialists of VBLHEP Krystian Roslon. Lectures on the key elements and subsystems of the constructed complex NICA and on its future experiments were presented to the audience by young VBLHEP staff members: Alexey Aparin, Mikhail Shandov, Alexander Ramsdorf, Pavel Batyuk, Nikolay Geraksiev and Alexander Gribovsky. The event was continued by an excursion around the constructed NICA complex. Guests were acquainted with the factory of superconducting magnets, they also examined in detail the BM@N experimental facility with a target on the Nuclotron extracted beam, walked around the construction site of the complex, bypassed the accelerator complex under construction and listened to the information about the cryogenic systems.

“This is an event in which everyone interested can take part,” Krystian Rosłon said to the reporter of the JINR Weekly Newspaper, “we wanted staff members of our and other JINR laboratories and, of course, Dubna citizens to take part in the event. We were surprised and disappointed that there were too many applications – 230 people registered. Our organizational resources allowed acceptance of 6 groups 13 people each, so we had to select 80 participants. The priority was given to representatives of other cities and institutes, for example, MEPhI, MSU. Moreover, two days earlier, a large-scale MPD and BM@N collaboration meeting was held in VBLHEP, and several participants stayed here to see how the youth of JINR reports on implementation of the NICA project and to participate in excursions. That is why we chose English for lectures.”

Photos by Elena Puzynina, Scientific Information Department