Events

Jubilee of MLIT JINR: Institute’s “digital heart” has been beating for 60 years

On 23 September 2026, the JINR Mir Cultural Center hosted a celebration marking the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the JINR Meshcheryakov Laboratory of Information Technologies. That evening colleagues from the JINR Directorate, Laboratories, and national groups, as well as representatives of partner organizations, gathered to congratulate MLIT. Many warm and sincere words were addressed to the Laboratory, its founders, veterans, and young staff members. The event became a kind of milestone, summing up interim results and opening new horizons for future achievements.

The order establishing the Laboratory of Computing Techniques and Automation, as MLIT JINR was known until 2000, was signed on 19 August 1966. The initiative to create the Laboratory came from Academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences Nikolay Nikolaevich Bogoliubov and Corresponding Member Mikhail Grigorievich Meshcheryakov, who was appointed its first director. The JINR Computing Center, the departments and groups of the Laboratory of High Energies and the Laboratory of Nuclear Problems laid the foundation of the new laboratory. The computing machines that subsequently appeared at the Institute enlarged the scope of experimental and theoretical research, which contributed to the development of new scientific areas. Today, just as many years ago, MLIT makes an invaluable contribution to JINR’s flagship projects. The Laboratory provides the Institute with network, computing, and software resources, ensures mathematical support for a wide range of research, enhancing the development of advanced scientific fields. Currently, 348 staff members, including 23 doctors of science and 71 candidates of science, work in the Laboratory’s scientific subdivisions.

Opening the celebratory evening, MLIT Director Sergei Shmatov emphasized that the Laboratory had always been a step ahead of its time, creating a powerful computing foundation for world-class scientific achievements. “Looking back, we recall with deep gratitude the founding fathers and all those who laid down the Laboratory’s unique traditions, created the first algorithms for mathematical modeling and data processing, and built computing centers. Their scientific passion, boundless energy, and dedication have shaped the incomparable spirit that drives us forward. Today, it is impossible to imagine processing data from the experiments at the NICA accelerator complex, the Baikal-GVD neutrino telescope, the CERN research program and many other high-level experiments without our unique heterogeneous distributed infrastructure, the Govorun supercomputer, grid technologies, and cloud computing. MLIT is JINR’s digital heart, beating in unison with all the Institute’s Laboratories, subdivisions, Member States, partners in the Russian Federation and beyond,” Sergei Shmatov underlined.

JINR Director Grigory Trubnikov highlighted that the Laboratory had originated as a tool for experimental nuclear physics; however, it soon became clear that automation, cybernetics, and computing constituted a distinct field of science in their own right, known as data science, which is currently developing at a rapid pace. “Throughout the Laboratory’s history, its leaders and their teams have earned JINR a reputation as one of the most prominent institutions in this field of science not only in Russia and the Member States, but likely in the entire world. Thanks to MLIT’s basic facility, the Multifunctional Information and Computing Complex, we have established communication bridges with the whole world, with every country. Thousands, if not tens of thousands, of people utilize the Laboratory’s computing power on a daily basis. Not a single experiment at the Institute, none of our basic facilities can do without MLIT’s capabilities,” JINR Director summarized.

MLIT Scientific Leader Vladimir Korenkov delivered an overview tracing the key stages of the Laboratory’s development and its notable achievements from previous years, including, the creation of a Fortran translator, the automation of film information processing, program libraries, software for large-scale international experiments in particle and nuclear physics, and the establishment of telecommunication channels. Vladimir Korenkov described the achievements of MLIT mathematicians regarding the theoretical justification and practical implementation of computational physics methods for the numerical study of nonlinear, multi-parameter models of complex physical systems. Investigations in the field of computer algebra and symbolic computations have become yet another remarkable example of the Laboratory’s activities. Among the major recent outcomes are the implementation of grid technologies, the creation of the Tier2 and Tier1 centers for processing and storing data from the experiments of the Large Hadron Collider, the development of the cloud infrastructure, etc. An entire era has passed in 60 years, and the Govorun supercomputer is now a billion times more powerful than MLIT’s first large-scale computing machines, BESM-6 and CDC 6500. “Our daily traffic amounts to 200 terabytes. The total traffic up to and including 2025 is 90 petabytes, a figure far greater than that of the whole Russian scientific and educational sector, for example,” MLIT Scientific Leader stated providing the figures. Vladimir Korenkov pointed out that basic departments at MSU and Dubna University served as a valuable source of new personnel for MLIT; moreover, the Laboratory actively fosters young researchers through its Autumn and Spring IT Schools. MLIT also places importance on preserving historical memory: to mark the Laboratory’s anniversary, a series of video interviews with its veterans, accompanied by articles in the Weekly JINR newspaper, has been launched, as well as an exhibition entitled “The Epoch of Impulse at LCTA” and a sequence of historical posts on MLIT’s social media channels have been organized.

The Laboratory received a multitude of congratulations on the occasion of its anniversary. Warm wishes were offered by the heads of VBLHEP, BLTP, LRB, UC JINR, Head of the Dubna City District Maxim Tikhomirov, Professor of St. Petersburg State University of Industrial Technologies and Design, the niece of M.G. Meshcheryakov Galina Meshcheryakova, the son of N.N. Govorun Nikolay Govorun, Director of the RAS Institute for System Programming, RAS Academician Arutyun Avetisyan, Dean of the MSU Faculty of Computational Mathematics and Cybernetics, RAS Academician Igor Sokolov, Assistant to the President of the NRC Kurchatov Institute Vasily Velikhov, CEO of RSC Technologies Alexander Moskovsky, representatives from MSU and Dubna University, staff members and partners from the JINR Member States, including Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Mongolia.