MLIT delegation at JINR Days in Armenia Representatives from the Meshcheryakov Laboratory of Information Technologies, headed by MLIT Director Sergei Shmatov, participated in the Days of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Armeniawithin the JINR delegation. The event, which took place in Yerevan on 28 September – 2 October, marked JINR’s 70th anniversary. The objectives of events within the JINR Days in Armenia was to enhance cooperation between JINR and research institutes of the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia (НАН РА) and educational institutions of the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports of the Republic of Armenia.. In addition to MLIT Director, Scientific Leader Vladimir Korenkov, Advisor to the Laboratory’s Directorate for Life Sciences Samvel Harutyunyan, Scientific Secretary Olga Derenovskaia, Head of the Sector of Nonlinear System Modeling Methods Alexander Ayriyan, and Senior Researcher Igor Pelevanyuk took part in the JINR Days in Armenia. The opening was held on 28 September at the Mesrop Mashtots Research Institute of Ancient Manuscripts (Matenadara, Yerevan). The event was attended by a delegation from the Institute’s Directorate and leading scientists from the JINR Laboratories, headed by JINR Director Grigory Trubnikov, as well as representatives from national universities, research centers, and the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia. On that day, an agreement on cooperation in the field of personnel training was signed at Yerevan State University (YSU) between JINR and YSU. On the same day, the JINR delegation and MLIT representatives visited the A. Alikhanyan National Science Laboratory (AANL)), where Sergei Shmatov delivered a talk on collaboration between JINR and AANL during a panel discussion on JINR–Armenia cooperation. “Yerevan and Dubna are linked by decades of successful scientific partnership, and we are currently continuing to actively develop our strategic collaboration in fundamental physics, IT, and biomedical technologies,” he noted. The talk highlighted the active role of Armenian physicists in the construction and investigations of the NICAmegascience complex. In 2022, AANL became the first institute to sign a memorandum of understanding with the SPD collaboration; in 2024, it joined the elaboration of FARICH detectors; and in 2025, a joint JINR–AANL laboratory for aerogel research was established. Scientists from Armenia also carry out joint research in the CMS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERNand develop projects in the field of theoretical physics. In radiobiology and life sciences, joint efforts have resulted in the creation and development of web services, such as MOSTLIT for automating the analysis of radiation-induced foci in cell nuclei and a service for the Morris Water Maze behavioral test, which help to study the effects of radiation on living organisms and cognitive functions. In his report, Sergei Shmatov paid special attention to the topic of IT and distributed computing. Armenia’s computing resources, including the Aznavour supercomputer and GPU farms at leading universities (YSU and RAU)), are being integrated into the global grid infrastructure for distributed computing, specifically WLCG and NICA. This opens up new opportunities for data analysis, with JINR and Armenian scientists already actively applying machine learning algorithms for particle identification in the MPD NICA experiment. A key event within the JINR Days in Armenia was a roundtable discussion entitled “Artificial Intelligence in Science and Industry: Opportunities and Challenges”, organized at the initiative of Scientific Leader of the Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions, Academician Yuri Oganessian. Along with representatives from JINR, specifically Vladimir Korenkov and Samvel Harutyunyan on behalf of MLIT, its participants included representatives from Armenia’s IT industry, educational and research centers in the field of information technology. The round table was moderated by Director of the Institute for System Programming of the Russian Academy of Sciences, RAS Academician Arutyun Avetisyan. “Artificial intelligence is currently permeating all spheres of life, therefore, humanity has to contend with various aspects of AI use, both technological and moral-ethical. To explore and discuss these issues from diverse perspectives, Yuri Tsolakovich brought together experts from the academic community, research institutes, the IT sector, and industry,” Sergei Shmatov commented on the roundtable discussion. The JINR Days in Armenia continued at Yerevan State University. A talk by MLIT Director Sergei Shmatov presented the Laboratory’s major achievements in distributed and high-performance computing for fundamental and applied research. The Tier1 data center for the CMS experiment, which operates at MLIT, consistently holds leading positions globally in terms of availability and reliability. The grid infrastructure is being actively enlarged to meet the needs of the NICA megaproject BM@N, MPD, SPD) and the JUNO neutrino observatory. The total data storage capacity of the MLIT ecosystem exceeds 200 PB. The JINR hyperconverged system, the Govorun supercomputer, has a peak performance of 2.2 PFlops for standard tasks and 58 PFlops for artificial intelligence algorithms. The Govorun supercomputer is equipped with liquid cooling and is the most energy-efficient computing center in Russia (PUE = 1.06). The resources of the supercomputer are used for quantum chromodynamics computations, radiation biology, and modeling for NICA. A quantum polygon is deployed on top of the HybriLIT platform. The ecosystem supports deep machine learning libraries and neural network frameworks, facilitating applied tasks ranging from agricultural crop diagnostics to biomedical projects. The delegation also visited the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia and the Russian-Armenian University (RAU), where a meeting on education with a focus on RAU network programs was held, as well as the CANDLESynchrotron Research Institute, which hosted a round table discussion on life sciences. Furthermore, at the initiative of Alexander Ayriyan, one of the organizers of the JINR Days in Armenia, in collaboration with the JINR University Center, a series of popular science lectures was organized in Armenian schools. As pointed out by Sergei Shmatov, who is responsible for cooperation between JINR and Armenia, holding the JINR Days in Armenia made it possible to comprehensively evaluate the status of ongoing collaboration in key areas. The scientists presented major results of long-term partnership and outlined plans for the future. “At the same time, we have already moved on to the practical implementation of other joint projects that had previously taken a back seat. A primary focus will be the creation of a unified distributed computing system, enabling Armenia to participate both in external international scientific projects and in the NICA megascience project,” Sergei Shmatov underlined. He also said that, as part of joint work, there had been reached agreements to send specialists from Armenia to MLIT JINR for training, with the aim of subsequently deploying data centers and organizing high-performance distributed computing in their country. According to Sergei Shmatov, scientific cooperation between Dubna and Yerevan is developing dynamically. In March 2024, an agreement to expand scientific and technical cooperation between JINR and AANL was signed in Dubna. To date, there is ongoing collaboration with AANL across 12 scientific topics, and with Yerevan State University, as well as other Armenian universities and laboratories, across 10 topics. “The partnership between Yerevan and Dubna, which today encompasses dozens of joint topics and international experiments, including the MPD and SPD experiments at the NICA collider and the CMS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, remains a striking example of effective international science,” Sergei Shmatov concluded. During the visit, in recognition of a contribution to the development of bilateral scientific and technical cooperation, “60 Years of MLIT” jubilee medals were awarded: Artur Movsisyan, Plenipotentiary Representative of the Government of the Republic of Armenia at JINR, Deputy Chairman of the Higher Education and Science Committee of the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports of the Republic of Armenia; Rafael Barkhudaryan, Vice-Rector of Yerevan State University; Armen Tumasyan, Head of the YSU Department of Nuclear Physics and Astrophysics, Chairman of the SPD Collaboration Council; Gevorg Karyan, Director of the A. Alikhanyan National Science Laboratory; Norayr Akopov, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Professor, a leading specialist in the field of computational physics and data analysis for modern experiments at the A. Alikhanyan National Science Laboratory. Photos by the press offices of the NAS RA and Yerevan State University
