New horizons for cooperation with scientific organizations in South Africa On 24 March 2025, a delegation from the Republic of South Africa visited the Meshcheryakov Laboratory of Information Technologies. Angus Paterson, Deputy CEO of the National Research Foundation, and Rudolph Nchodu, Deputy Director of iThemba Labs, got acquainted with the Laboratory and met with the MLIT Directorate within their four-day visit to JINR. The meeting at the MLIT Directorate was attended by MLIT Director Sergei Shmatov and his Deputy Nikolay Voytishin, MLIT Scientific Leader Vladimir Korenkov. The parties discussed possible directions of cooperation in the field of distributed computing and supercomputing in application to megascience projects. Sergei Shmatov told the guests about the Laboratory’s participation in the experiments at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN and about the experience of organizing Tier1 and Tier2 data centers. The areas of cooperation in high-energy physics in organizing a computing infrastructure for the experiments at the JINR NICA accelerator complex, as well as within the JUNO neutrino experiment in China, were considered. One of the topics of the meeting was the discussion of proposals for the joint development of the South African IT infrastructure in light of the organization of a data center for the SKA (Square Kilometre Array) project under construction. It is assumed that the SKA will become the world’s largest radio astronomy observatory. According to the South African representatives, the use of IT technologies in applied areas is of great interest to scientific organizations in South Africa. The guests were presented with MLIT’s experience in employing artificial intelligence, in particular, deep machine learning, in scientific and applied tasks. During the meeting, a proposal to organize a round table as part of the upcoming international conference “Distributed Computing and Grid Technologies in Science and Education” (GRID'2025) for a wide-ranging discussion of cooperation between South Africa and JINR was put forward. At the end of the conversation, the guests accompanied by the MLIT Directorate visited the JINR Multifunctional Information and Computing Complex. During the visit to Dubna, the South African representatives visited VBLHEP, LRB, DLNP, FLNR, UC, and the interactive exhibition “JINR Basic Facilities”. A meeting with employees, the visitors from South Africa and members of the JINR Finance Committee took place. The South African delegation also participated in a session of the JINR Committee of Plenipotentiaries and a ceremonial meeting marking the 69th anniversary of the foundation of the Joint Institute.
