On 8 August 2018, the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research was visited by Counsellor on Science and Technology of the Embassy of the French Republic in the Russian Federation Mr. Abdo Malaс with the aim of strengthening relations and exploring ways to develop cooperation between JINR and France.

Abdo Malac visited the Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions to get acquainted with the objects of scientific infrastructure of JINR, as well as the Veksler and Baldin Laboratory of High Energy Physics. Counsellor Malac is a professional in the fields of information technology; in that regard, a visit to the Laboratory of Information Technologies and its Multifunctional Information and Computing Complex were the subjects of his particular interest. LIT Director V.V. Korenkov organized a meeting of the Counsellor with a French colleague Andrey Tsaregorodtsev from the Center for Particle Physics of Marseille (CPPM – CNRS) who is a leading developer of the DIRAC distributed computing system. By coincidence, Andrey Tsaregorodtsev is conducting joint work with LIT at this time, so this meeting made the Counsellor’s visit to LIT even more fruitful.

In the photo (left to right): Counsellor on Science and Technology of the Embassy of the French Republic in RF Abdo Malac, JINR Vice-Director Vladimir Kekelidze and Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Chile to the RF Mr. Rodrigo Jose Nieto Maturanaduring the excursion to VBLHEP

The visit of the Counsellor was concluded at a meeting with JINR Vice-Director M.G. Itkis. Abdo Malac shared his impressions and said that the trip to Dubna is his first departure from Moscow after his appointment. M.G. Itkis noted that JINR links with the Embassy of the French Republic are traditionally strong and friendly; he expressed hope that the Embassy will assist in the preparation of the Memorandum of understanding between the Government of France and JINR which was officially started during the JINR Days in Paris in February 2018.

In his interview to the JINR’s media, Abdo Malac said that he was interested not only in the opportunities and activities of LIT, he was also impressed by the JINR basic facilities and the upcoming experiments. Counsellor Abdo Malac noted that he was impressed by the breadth of international scientific relations of JINR and a number of joint activities with international scientific centers.

The visit of Counsellor Abdo Malac coincided with the visit to JINR of Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Chile to the Russian Federation Mr. Rodrigo Jose Nieto Maturana.

Photos by Igor Lapenko, Scientific Information Department