From 13 to 15 December, a meeting of the SPD Collaboration is taking place in the online format. The event has become the second in a row and gathered more than 100 participants. The meeting is a platform for discussions on the progress in the SPD experiment at the NICA complex and various issues of the Collaboration’s operation.

On the first day of the event, Chairman of the SPC Collaboration Board Egle Tomasi (CAE Saclay) and SPD project Leader at JINR Alexey Guskov welcomed participants of the meeting. The reporters presented the news of the Collaboration since the previous meeting in June 2021. Thus, the Collaboration Board consisting of representatives of 30 participating organizations has been formed. The Collaboration has adopted the chart-bylaws and is forming the Executive and Technical Boards and the Publication Committee. Nominations for the positions of two spokespersons are being collected. The elections will take place in February 2022.

“The Collaboration is in good shape, especially in view of limited in-person meetings due to the pandemic. We have a lot of work ahead and we are open for new collaborators,” Alexey Guskov said.

Moreover, Alexey Guskov in his report noted that the technical concept of the SPD setup has undergone a number of changes. The SPD TDR is planned to be presented at the meeting of the JINR Programme Advisory Committee for Particle Physics in June 2022.

Other plans of the Collaboration include the presentation of the DAC SPD at the January meeting of the PAC for Particle Physics and the finalisation of the Memorandum of Understanding between organizations participating in the Collaboration. Its signing will conclude the formation of the SPD Collaboration.

Participants of the three-day meeting will discuss data acquisition and computing in the experiment, its hardware, as well as SPD physics and Monte-Carlo simulations.