On 28 January 2019, Yandex representatives Sergei Chernyshev, Head of the Talent Management, and Andrei Ustuizhanin, Leader of joint Yandex-CERN projects, visited JINR. The aim of the visit was to identify areas of mutual interest and possibilities for cooperation.

The Yandex representatives started their acquaintance with the Joint Institute in the Veksler and Baldin Laboratory of High Energy Physics where they met VBLHEP Deputy Director Yu. K. Potrebenikov who accompanied them to the Synchrophasotron hall, where they were acquainted with the light and heavy ion injection complexes and with the progress in assembling of the NICA Booster. Furthermore, the guests were acquainted with the Nuclotron accelerator, the Factory of superconducting magnets and visited the construction site of the NICA complex.

After that, a meeting was organized in the JINR Directorate at which the Joint Institute was represented by JINR Vice-Directors R. Lednický and B. Yu. Sharkov, JINR Chief Scientific Secretary A. S. Sorin, SIM Office Director A. V. Tamonov, F & E Office Deputy Head M. P. Vasiliev, LIT Deputy Director T. A. Strizh, Head of the BLTP Sector S. N. Nedelko, and DLNP Senior Researcher M. V. Zhabitsky. The JINR representatives expressed their interest in cooperation with Yandex in the fields of experimental data processing for the NICA project, computing, educational programmes and development of the JINR digital administrative infrastructure.

The guests told the participants of the meeting about the Faculty of computer sciences created in 2014 on the initiative of the Yandex company on the base of the Higher School of Economics, which trains specialists in the fields of big data storage and processing, and also about the existing cooperation between Yandex and the LHCb experiment in CERN in the fields of machine learning algorithms for experimental data processing. JINR representatives expressed the interest in application of the expertise Yandex has in data processing to the BM@N experiment. In his turn, Andrei Ustuizhanin informed that Yandex is aimed to enhance its participation in scientific projects, and the company is interested to join the MPD-BM@N international collaboration.

Photos by Igor Lapenko

Yandex has been cooperating with CERN since 2011. At first, the company provided to CERN computing resources, and then Yandex specialists designed the search service for retrieving events in the LHCb experimental data. In January 2013, the company officially joined the European Organization for Nuclear Research in the frames of the CERN openlab project and provided to scientists the access to the “MatrixNet” technology.

As far as training of highly qualified specialists is of primary importance for the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research as well as for the Yandex company, special attention at the meeting was paid to educational issues. Sergei Chernyshev presented analytical research of Yandex in this field highlighting the necessity to participate in specialized education of the youth starting from the school stage. He also spoke about the development of educational projects of the company, such as Yandex.Lyceum aimed at school students who seriously want to master programming and Yandex.Textbook, a service with tasks on mathematics and the Russian language for senior school students. The parties agreed that this field is promising for establishing cooperation. Moreover, the Yandex representatives expressed their interest in JINR summer student programmes as a format of cooperation.

At the end of the meeting, the parties outlined the next steps in the outlined directions and exchanged contact information expressing hope for the future fruitful cooperation.