Chairman of the Egyptian Atomic Energy Authority Professor Atef A. Abdel-Fattah and Vice-Chairman of the Authority Professor Samy Sh. Soliman spent their workweek from 12 to 16 January 2015 at JINR.

During five days, the guests learned a lot about scientific research at JINR: they visited IBR-2 and the IREN facility in FLNP, were shown cyclotrons MC-400 and IC-100, the microtron and the nanocenter in FLNR, were acquainted with the NICA project, detector laboratories and the factory of superconducting magnets in VBLHEP, and with the medical-technical complex, detectors for medicine, neutrino research in DLNP. The guests visited the Laboratory of Radiation Biology and the Laboratory of Information Technologies. Professor Atef A. Abdel-Fattah spoke about activities of the Egyptian Atomic Energy Authority at the seminar in FLNR. The visit was finished with a meeting in the JINR Directorate which was attended by JINR Vice-Director M.G. Itkis, JINR Vice-Director R. Lednický, D.V. Kamanin, A.G. Popeko, Egyptian the JINR staff member V. Badawi. The guests from Egypt gave an interview to the correspondent of the JINR weekly newspaper “Dubna”.

Professor A. Atef Abdel-Fattah: First of all, I want to thank JINR for hospitality and organization of this visit. We outlined a number of new directions of cooperation, in particular directions related to the basic questions of nuclear physics, transmutation of nuclear and long-lived waste, design of detectors. We discussed issues related to nuclear medicine, and many other opportunities for development of cooperation. I would also like to emphasize that this is not the beginning – we already have many joint projects, and this time we discussed how to make our cooperation closer and more productive.

I visited JINR for the first time, and I was very interested in everything: in equipment as well as in people. People are very friendly, highly qualified; it is obvious that they love their job. So my impressions were only the best and it is very difficult to choose the brightest.

Professor Samy S. Soliman: I want to thank the JINR Directorate and Directors of all laboratories which we have visited, starting with the Laboratory of Neutron Physics and ending with the Laboratory of Information Technologies, for excellent organization of our visit and very interesting meetings. As Vice-Chairman of the Authority on Educational Issues, I want to say that we are very interested in participation in JINR educational programmes.

We have a large amount of feedback from Egyptian students who participated in summer student practices of the UC JINR. The feedback contains exceptionally high assessment of the importance of such work. We feel that it was very useful for a large number of Egyptian students. And the experience that young people have gained here certainly will be useful in their future scientific work, and they remain good friends of JINR during their life time.

The meeting was finished with the signing of a memorandum.

Olga Tarantina (JINR weekly newspaper “Dubna: science, community, progress”)