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Educational cooperation for training of personnel

On 13 March, the round table "Innovative practices in education: experience of the university community" was held at Dubna State University, where the representatives of JINR and of a number of leading Russian universities discussed the accumulated experience, approaches and development of educational processes in training highly qualified specialists in various fields. MLIT Scientific Leader Vladimir Korenkov took part in the event.

On behalf of the Acting Rector of Dubna State University Andrey Denikin, the participants of the round table were welcomed by Acting Vice-Rector for Education and Methodology Olga Anisimova. She told about the current status of the university, its structure, educational programmes and development prospects, in particular, about the project of the University campus "Dubna" - the International Park of Science and Technology, scheduled for implementation in the area of the left-bank site of the Special Economic Zone "Dubna".

Vladimir Korenkov in his report presented the experience of organizing high-level IT-education and personnel training for MLIT on the example of cooperation with Dubna University, where he holds the position of Head of the Department of Distributed Information Computing Systems of the Institute of System Analysis and Management (ISAM).

As Vladimir Korenkov emphasized, the issues of training specialists to implement the laboratory's tasks are primarily due to the complexity of the scientific tasks to be met that often relate to "megasciences" projects. IT-technologies that are used to meet business or production tasks and which educational programmes are developed for in universities, are not sufficient in this area. For example, the processing of experimental data from experiments at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN or at the NICA collider in Dubna that is about to be launched, has very high requirements for accuracy, transmission rate, volumes of stored information and also implies the most complex organization of distributed computing. The centres involved in data processing and analysis have different architectures: grid sites, supercomputers, computing clusters, cloud infrastructure, others. Meeting such issues requires integrative techniques and high-level software that is not used anywhere else but in this particular scientific environment. Therefore, MLIT develops unique mathematical models, data processing techniques, as well as develops its own technologies and systems.

"We are facing an urgent task of training specialists capable of working in our scientific environment. It is obvious that mass training of such personnel is inexpedient and economically unprofitable. In fact, we are talking about the training of "single", narrowly qualified specialists and this is an extremely difficult task. Here, the educational cooperation of JINR with universities is especially important. And first of all, with Dubna University, since our goal is to nurture specialists starting from the student's school", the speaker highlighted.

This task is accomplished, among other things, through the wide involvement of JINR staff in the educational process, in particular, 33 specialists of the Laboratory of Information Technologies teach at Dubna University.

Vladimir Korenkov also emphasized that a training infrastructure has been developed at MLIT that provides for trainings, master classes and courses on parallel programming technologies. Training is carried out on the basis of the heterogeneous platform HybriLIT, where a training and testing ground is deployed, allowing students to master the work on the latest computing architectures, including the JINR supercomputer "Govorun".

With the support of MLIT, a basic department of distributed information-computing systems was established at Dubna University. It implements the bachelor's programme "Software engineering", as well as master's programmes: "Mathematical simulation and data analysis", "Digital platforms and Big Data analytics". Also, since 2019, the International School "Big Data Analytics" has been developing at the University under the patronage of JINR, focused on the training of IT specialists for the development of computing megascience projects, Big Data analytics, digital economy and other promising areas.

Seminars and pregraduation internships for students are organized at MLIT that enables the Laboratory to employ both Master's students after the defense of qualifying papers and young specialists after postgraduate studies. Support of talented students is organized, which JINR scholarships are provided for. Twice a year, the Laboratory organizes a youth school on information technologies that demonstrates high efficiency: during two years of this series of schools, 18 participants have become JINR staff members. At the same time, within the framework of major international conferences and meetings, MLIT organizes lectures, practical classes, IT-schools of different levels for the youth, so that eminent scientists could not only pass their experience to them, but also focus on promising young specialists. "We believe that in this way we not only work to meet our staff tasks, but also inspire the youth to come to science, ignite interest in them," Vladimir Korenkov emphasized.

Special Representative of JINR Director for Educational Policy Samvel Harutyunyan told about his vision of the development of Dubna University at the meeting. He emphasized a number of advantages that the University could gain by acquiring the status of a research university - a structure that unites education, science and innovation activities. Samvel Harutyunyan highlighted the necessity to establish permanent specialized councils and JINR representative offices at the University, as well as to actively involve the universities of the Member States in the organization of the educational process.

The concept of training IT specialists in emerging digital technologies was presented by Scientific Leader of ISAM of Dubna University Evgenia Cheremisina. The speaker identified the completeness of education of IT-specialists as the main challenge. As the key components of the ISAM curriculum development Evgenia Cheremisina highlighted the updating of educational programmes in the field of digital economy, strengthening of interdisciplinarity, expansion of international cooperation and active introduction of artificial intelligence technologies.

Professor of the Department of Computer Simulation and Multiprocessor Systems Alexander Degtyarev spoke about the mathematical component in the new educational programme "Big Data and distributed digital platform" at St. Petersburg State University. As the speaker highlighted, MLIT and personally Vladimir Korenkov that is also Chairman of the State Attestation Committee for Master's thesis defense at St. Petersburg State University, played an important role in the development of the programme.

The representatives of the National Research Nuclear University "MEPhI" Head of the Department of Analysis of Competitive Systems Alexey Artamonov and senior lecturer of the same department Andrey Cherkassky presented a report on search and processing of scientific information in applied research. Associate Professor of the Department of ACS and Director of the Institute of Computer Sciences at MISIS Sergey Solodov spoke about the participation of the National University of Science and Technology MISIS in the experiment of transition to a new education system. His colleague Igor Temkin, Head of the Department of ACS MISIS, presented a report "Project activities of students in the interests of industrial partners". Modern international campus for energy specialists was the topic of the report by Vice-Rector for International Relations of National Research University "MPEI" Alexander Tarasov. Acting Vice Rector for Digital Transformation at the Stroganov Russian State University of Art and Industry Konstantin Belyakov spoke about the application of AI technologies for proctoring in education. Associate Professor of the Department of System Analysis and Management, Head of the Centre for Cloud Computing and Supercomputing Support of ISAM Dubna University Mikhail Belov made a report "Virtual computer laboratory based on the principles of self-organization as the foundation of innovative IT-education".

The second day of the event was dedicated to learning about the scientific infrastructure of JINR that started at the Laboratory of High Energy Physics. The guests visited the accelerator complex of the NICA megasciences project, visited its experimental physics facilities, as well as the factory of superconducting magnets. The participants of the round table learnt about the accelerator complex of the Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions, including the Superheavy Element Factory. The guests were impressed by the meeting with the legend of world physics, FLNR Scientific Leader Yuri Oganessian and by a visit to the exhibition of reproductions of paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder curated by him. In the Laboratory of Information Technologies, the participants of the event visited the JINR Multifunctional Information and Computing Complex and had a look at the "Govorun" supercomputer.

As reported by MLIT