Meeting with MEPhI governance, aimed to enhance educational cooperation with JINR, was held at MLIT On 17 September, a meeting between JINR representatives and Vice-Rector of the National Research Nuclear University MEPhI Natalia Barbashina took place at the Meshcheryakov Laboratory of Information Technologies. The key objective of the visit was to enhance cooperation and discuss practical steps for its development. The meeting, organized by Director of the JINR University Center Dmitry Kamanin, was attended by MLIT Director Sergei Shmatov, FLNP Director Egor Lychagin, VBLHEP representatives, namely, MPD Collaboration Spokesman Victor Ryabov and his Deputy Arkady Taranenko, as well as staff members of FLNR, FLNP and MEPhI. The participants of the meeting highlighted the long-standing and fruitful cooperation between JINR and MEPhI, which has resulted in MEPhI graduates working in all JINR Laboratories. The experience of the JINR-based Department of Experimental Methods of Nuclear Physics at MEPhI, headed by JINR Scientific Leader, RAS Academician Victor Matveev, was also discussed. The JINR representatives emphasized the current high interest in MEPhI graduates from all of the Institute’s Laboratories, as well as from the collaborations of international experiments conducted at the NICA accelerator complex. In this regard, the participants talked over the elaboration of a new bachelor’s program for the JINR-based department at MEPhI, along with approaches to career guidance for young people and students’ engagement in JINR research, starting from undergraduates. In its updated format, this department could serve as a single entry point for young specialists to various JINR Laboratories for all MEPhI students. As a first practical step in this direction, it was decided by JINR to modernize the list of basic research areas within the Institute’s activities, in which students can be offered various projects for their final theses. This covers a broad range of scientific fields, including particle physics, high-energy physics, neutron, nuclear, and theoretical physics, information technology, etc. “MLIT has a successful collaboration experience with the MEPhI Department of Elementary Particle Physics within a master’s program where students can work at the intersection of high-energy physics, particle physics, and information technology. This program was specifically designed and allows graduates to receive a diploma with two specializations: one in physics and one in information technology. Last year, four students graduated from this program, completing their final theses on the SPD experiment under the supervision of MLIT researchers and SPD collaboration leaders Danila Oleynik and Artem Petrosyan. As a result, two of the students continued working at our Laboratory. We would like to scale this successful practice of jointly training specialists in JINR’s areas of research with MEPhI throughout the Institute,” MLIT Director Sergei Shmatov pointed out. The participants plan to hold the next meeting on developing cooperation in the educational sphere within the XVI Collaboration Meeting of the MPD experiment at the NICA facility in late October. During the meeting, MEPhI representatives will have a detailed introduction to the JINR Laboratories, and return visits by JINR representatives to MEPhI will also be planned. During their visit to MLIT, the MEPhI representatives, accompanied by MLIT Deputy Director Dmitry Podgainy, were introduced to the JINR Multifunctional Information and Computing Complex, as well as took part in a memorial seminar dedicated to the 115th anniversary of the birth of the Laboratory’s founder, Mikhail Grigorievich Meshcheryakov.
