The Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Federative Republic of Brazil in the Russian Federation Antonio José Vallim Guerreiro came on his first official visit to the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research on 26 January 2015.Mr. Guerreiro and his wife met with the JINR Directorate: JINR Director V.A. Matveev, JINR Vice-Director M.G. Itkis, JINR Chief Scientific Secretary N.A. Russakovich and Head of the JINR International Cooperation Department D.V. Kamanin. In the first half of the day, the guests visited the Veksler and Baldin Laboratory of High Energy Physics, where they were acquainted with the NICA project, the factory superconducting magnets and the detector laboratories. After lunch, the guests visited basic facilities of the Frank Laboratory of Neutron Physics and the Dzhelepov Laboratory of Nuclear Problems. Before leaving, Brazilian Ambassador shared his impressions: “What we have seen here was really interesting. My wife is a physicist and I am not. However, we have learned a lot, it was a high-level visit. I received an invitation to visit JINR a year ago, when I was appointed Ambassador. I really wanted to come here, furthermore, as is well known, there are already relations with certain Brazilian centers. But my work schedule did not allow me to do it earlier. Therefore, the visit took place now, and I see that the potential for expanding cooperation with Brazilian research centers is very high. A program called “Science without borders” is being implemented in Brazil, and, of course, we support the development of international cooperation, as well as we send students to study abroad. Brazil is a large country, maybe not as big as Russia, but it is rich in resources and, of course, its main priorities are given to research areas that contribute to our development.” JINR Director Academician V.A. Matveev commented to reporters on the significance of this visit: “The world of physics is rather narrow, and we are already cooperating with a number of Brazilian physicists; some of them expressed their wish to participate in construction of the NICA complex and in experiments on it. We also meet with our Brazilian colleagues, while participating in international projects abroad, in particular in CERN at the Large Hadron Collider. The scale of our projects and their focus on serving the interests of a wide circle of physicists naturally make us want to expand the circle of international relations, including Latin American, Brazilian colleagues. We were pleased to see what a positive impression the visit to our laboratories made on the Brazilian Ambassador. Everyone has seen his sincere desire to promote establishment of closer relations with JINR, right up to the signing of the intergovernmental agreement on associate membership and we hope that it will happen one day. In the meantime, we are very interested in development, enhancement of our relations as the mutual interest of scientists leads to what everyone wants – Brazil membership in one form or another to our Institute. In June this year, we expect the arrival of a large group of Brazilian scientists and we will hold joint meetings. Brazilian Ambassador expressed his desire to attend this event and be sure once again that it is in the interest of Brazilian scientists, interests of development of science and international cooperation. It is for good reason that we say that science is bringing nations together. We see it in real life, it happens before our eyes”.