Belarus, Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna agreed on $400,000 contracts

MINSK, 15 July (BelTA) - Belarus and the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, Russia have agreed on the contracts to supply high-tech equipment and to perform works totaling more than $400,000, Chairman of the Belarusian State Committee on Science and Technology Aleksandr Shumilin said at a meeting of the Coordinating Council for Cooperation with the JINR, BelTA learned from the press service of the State Committee on Science and Technology.

According to him, the parties signed the contracts worth more than $1.2 million in the first half of 2020. The bulk of the contracts and research work carried out by Belarusian organizations is implemented under the flagship international mega-science project NICA which aims to study hot and dense strongly interacting QCD matter and to search for possible manifestation of signs of the mixed phase and critical endpoint in heavy ion collisions.

“As part of the mega-science project NICA we have been working on a superconducting niobium resonator: a copper prototype is ready and tests are already underway. These works are carried out by the JINR, the Institute of Nuclear Problems of Belarusian State University, the Institute of Physics and Technology at the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, Belarusian State University of Informatics and Radioelectronics (BSUIR) and the National Research Nuclear University MEPhI (Russia). A number of unique mechanical and electronics nodes for the CMS muon detector have been developed and supplied to the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN),” Aleksandr Shumilin noted.

Belarusian scientists are involved in the project to create a multifunctional detector of the NICA accelerator complex. “Part of R&D is traditionally done as part of two largest CERN experiments: the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) and the ATLAS project. We supply segments of cooling panels, electronics protection modules, elements of mechanical structures,” Aleksandr Shumilin informed.

The most important area of cooperation with the JINR is the work with students and young scientists. Every year, more than 10 students and undergraduates from Belarus conduct international studies at the JINR Training and Scientific Center. They also take part in the International school-conference “Actual Problems of Microworld Physics”.

The Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna is an international intergovernmental research organization set up to combine efforts, scientific and material capacities of member states to study the fundamental properties of matter. At present JINR has 18 Member States: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bulgaria, Cuba, the Czech Republic, Georgia, Kazakhstan, D. P. Republic of Korea, Moldova, Mongolia, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam