On 29 October, the winners of the annual Moscow Region Governor’s Prize were announced. Young scientists and specialist were awarded for their endeavours in science, technology, engineering, and innovation. Among the fifteen prizewinners are two representatives of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research: Candidate of Technical Sciences, Head of the VBLHEP Scientific and Experimental Department of Superconducting Magnets and Technologies Dmitry Nikiforov and Candidate of Physics and Mathematics, a researcher at the BLTP Sector of Nuclear Reactions and Core Structure Evgeny Mardyban.

Dmitry Nikiforov presented the research titled “Advanced cryogenic systems for the NICA Accelerator Complex”. The author made a decisive contribution to a number of works carried out as part of NICA and other projects:

• the development and commissioning of a cryoprotection system for testing superconducting (SC) magnets;
• the creation of a mathematical model computing the cooling time of the Nuclotron SC magnets;
• the technology development and cryogenic testing of low-current input leads for correction magnets of the booster synchrotron and rings of the NICA Collider;
• the development of unique cryogenic systems for the SPD Detector, the MSC-230 Cyclotron, the SMES induction energy storage device;
• the development of cryogenic cryostats for tests under operating conditions of the SC resonators.

Evgeny Mardyban received the Governor’s Prize for the study of the structure and properties of atomic nuclei within the framework of collective nuclear models.

“The nucleus can take various forms depending on its mass and the ratio of neutrons and protons in it. The shape of the nucleus largely determines its structure and the range of excited states. In addition, the phenomenon of coexistence of different configurations corresponding to different core forms may occur in the core. The study of this phenomenon is very important both for understanding the fundamental properties of nuclear interaction and for nuclear physics applications,” Evgeny Mardyban commented on the significance of the work.

The author conducted a number of original scientific studies on the structure of heavy atomic nuclei under various deformations and at different excitation energies. The scope of the researcher’s activity includes implementing software for analysing experimental data and calculating the characteristics of nuclei necessary for conducting experiments. The methods and algorithms he designed can be applied to a variety of tasks requiring collective models of nuclei, and the results obtained can be used for a wide range of studies related to the phenomenon of coexistence of forms and phase transitions in the atomic nucleus. The calculation results of various nuclei characteristics can be useful for planning and conducting experiments studying heavy and superheavy nuclei and experiments related to various nuclear reactions.

We congratulate the Institute’s employees on winning the competition and wish them great scientific achievements, new discoveries, and brilliant results!