Institute day by day

Plans, forecasting and scientific inspiration

From 7 to 9 February 2025, a meeting of the Coordinating Council for Youth Affairs in the Scientific and Educational Spheres under the Council for Science and Education under the President of the Russian Federation and events dedicated to Russian Science Day took place in Dubna.

On 7 February, the participants met with Scientific Leader of the Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions at JINR, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Yuri Oganessian and toured the Superheavy Element Factory and the NICA Accelerator Complex.

On 8 February, the JINR International Conference Centre hosted a project discussion and the meeting of the Coordinating Council, which finished with team building activities: an intellectual competition and a team sports game.

The council’s meeting started with a greeting by JINR Director, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Grigory Trubnikov. The JINR Director expressed gratitude to the participants for choosing Dubna as the event’s venue.

“For almost 70 years, our Institute has maintained its position as an international intergovernmental organization. It seems to me there are several other locations in Russia that could benefit from undertaking scientific activities in a similar way. There is currently no country in the world that could build large ambitious projects alone. Therefore, especially now, in the era of global transformations, the trend is for the countries’ regional clusters to collaborate, thus combining the capabilities of science and technology, the experience of several countries to solve very ambitious tasks,” Grigory Trubnikov commented.

The JINR Director spoke about the Institute’s scientific and organizational activities, advisory and governing bodies, and the digitalisation and automation of internal administrative processes. Grigory Trubnikov presented the main latest achievements of the seven Joint Institute’s laboratories. These include preparations for the launch of the NICA Accelerator Complex: both the construction of the complex at the Laboratory of High Energy Physics and theoretical research conducted by the Laboratory of Theoretical Physics since 2007. Over the past few years, the Laboratory of Information Technologies has been actively working on modelling future collisions at NICA.

Grigory Trubnikov mentioned two formats of the Institute’s scientific activities. An innovation project competition is launching in 2025, aimed at implementing five to ten small technological projects per year. At the end of 2024, the first issue of the JINR peer-reviewed scientific journal Natural Science Review was published. Some of the new edition’s clear advantages is the quick peer review process and the wide range of genres of the accepted articles.

The Institute trains 900 students yearly, which is twice the pre-Covid figures, with 30 of them staying at JINR as research assistants.

Grigory Trubnikov answered numerous questions from the audience. The discussion covered the issues of scientific prizes and the importance of independent expertise for their awarding, the education process organization at the Moscow State University branch, and ways to motivate students to work at JINR. Other topics of the informal discussion included the lifestyle of a modern scientist and the quality of living in small scientific towns.

Council Chair, member of the Council for Science and Education under the President of the Russian Federation, Head of the Kurchatov Complex for Synchrotron and Neutron Investigations at Kurchatov Institute Nikita Marchenkov summarised the event’s results. He noted that holding a meeting at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research allowed the Council members to achieve several goals at once.

“We always hold our first meeting of the year on the Russian Science Day to approve the year’s work plan. This task was solved successfully. Additionally, we spent a lot of time discussing the long-term development strategy for the Coordinating Council’s community. The spirit of the Dubna science city inspired us to think and dream about our plans for the next 5-10 years. Considering that the Council includes specialists from completely different scientific fields, various organizations and departments, it was extremely important to show them the modern megascience facilities and scientific laboratories at JINR. I should note that the tour conducted for us was an answer to all of the young scientists’ questions about why facilities of this scale are needed, and particularly about the reasons that a collider is under construction in Russia and what it is. Everyone was impressed and, it seems to me, inspired to do science, so upon returning to their regions and cities, they will motivate their younger colleagues to have a productive working year,” Nikita Marchenkov noted.

Background information:

The Coordinating Council for Youth Affairs in the Scientific and Educational Spheres is an advisory body that coordinates the activities of public associations and organizations of young scientists, teachers, postgraduates, and students to consider issues related to the development of science and education. It was founded by the decision of the Presidium of the Council for Science, Education, and Technology under the President of the Russian Federation in February 2007.

The council members take part in many key initiatives of the Decade of Science and Technology in Russia: promoting science communication and popular science tourism, searching for talented youth, involving citizens in scientific volunteering, holding the Young Scientists Congress and schools for young researchers, teachers, postgraduates, and students, finding ways for scientists and developers to interact with the real economy companies, developing services and tools for the professional community of researchers, engineers, and technology entrepreneurs, creating scientific playgrounds, and others.

The Coordinating Council for Youth Affairs in the Scientific and Educational Spheres currently includes 66 young scientists, including Chair of the Association of Young Scientists and Specialists Vladislav Rozhkov.

JINR Press Office