At the STC meeting

Time for change for the better

On 19 March, a meeting of the Science and Technology Council of JINR was held in the JINR Conference Centre chaired by Elena Kolganova.

Director Grigory Trubnikov spoke about the work of Directorate and the most important events at the Institute since the beginning of this year. He highlighted that most of the news had already been discussed at the meetings, published on the website, in the newspaper and other information resources, nevertheless, new events arise every day.

There is a lot of information on the NICA project - construction of the collider building, successes of the collaboration at the SOCHI station. The project staff makes enormous efforts to prepare and start the session. More than a month of debugging on the booster was carried out, just the other day, the source of heavy ions was connected, at present, instead of helium ions we start working with xenon beams. In a few days, the Nuclotron will be connected. In parallel, preparations for magnetic measurements on the MPD are underway, followed by assembly of the detector and positioning it in its regular position.

The Superheavy Element Factory has reached a cruising operation mode. According to the latest data, as compared to the first years of operation (2019-2020), the efficiency has increased by 2.5-3 times. Construction of a new experimental hall is underway.

The LINAC-200 accelerator has become the basic DLNP facility. Almost all obligations under the JUNO project (China) were fulfilled and the detector is currently prepared for launching. Unforeseen weather conditions affected the Baikal-GVD expedition. The ice this year is little, 60-70 cm, there are many cracks, we have to make a new route every day. Together with JINR staff, a group of Chinese colleagues works that assemble their cluster with new generation modules.

For the first time in 14 years, plans for the development of the University Centre are discussed and a meeting of the UC Council was held.

A competition on innovative developments for youth teams was organized.

The first issue of the JINR scientific journal Natural Science Review was published. Seven articles were published in it, among them, a record-breaking large article on SPD - on 325 pages.

The first meeting on the celebration of the 70th anniversary of JINR will be held soon.

At the meeting of the Committee of Plenipotentiaries, a report of the Directorate for four years of work will be presented, as the time of elections is approaching. Director's term of office expires at the end of 2025, so after Grigory Trubnikov's report, the speakers evaluated the activities of the Director's team.

In particular, Sergey Shmatov emphasized that when there were uncertainties on cooperation with CERN, JINR Directorate approached the solution of this issue very diplomatically and cautiously. The Institute continued to fulfill its obligations and a balanced and calm policy was resulted in the decision of further cooperation.

Head of the national group of Kazakhstan Yerzhan Mukhamedzhanov spoke about the cooperation of Directorate with national groups, highlighted a positive trend in the prompt resolution of emerging issues by the services and heads of departments.

Acting Rector of Dubna University Andrey Denikin mentioned the changes for the better in the image of the Joint Institute that has become brighter and more attractive for successful young people.

JINR Chief Scientific Secretary Sergey Nedelko reminded that the second issue of the scientific journal Natural Science Review is prepared. Publications will be considered during defenses at JINR, so one can send articles, "for this is our communication channel and it should be the best". In addition, he stated that the Institute heroically copes with the supply and replacement of foreign equipment.

"Analyzing the year of work of Directorate," JINR Scientific Leader Victor Matveev said "I would like to say sincerely: a lot of new, positive and wonderful things have appeared in the life of our Institute. You can see for yourselves how much better our management system has become, the cooperation of Directorate with laboratories, the system of informing all the staff and our partners, as well as the cooperation with the Member States have improved.

In addition to positive estimates, there were wishes to devote more time and attention to the scientific component and to improve the procurement system in the future. E.V.Lychagin, S.I.Sidorchuk, A.I.Frank, V.V.Korenkov, R.V.Jolos, A.V.Butenko, M.N.Kapishin and S.N.Dmitriev also took part in the discussions.

Furthermore, Head of Human Resources and Records Management Department Alexander Verkheev spoke about the personnel and age structure of JINR, vacancies and sources of staffing of young employees.

A big challenge for JINR is the reduction of the staff and there was a significant reduction in 2022-2023, last year, it was possible to "stabilize the decline". Currently, the Institute employs more than 5000 people, 82% of them - in budgetary units. If we compare 2024 with 2021, the number of workers decreased by about 150 people, engineers and technicians and specialists - by 130 people, researchers - by 25, while the number of heads increased by 30 people that is due to the presence of small groups.

The percentage ratio by category varies from year to year within a percentage. Today, about 2500 researchers, engineers and technicians and 2100 workers and specialists work at JINR. Rough analytics show that for a complete renewal of the staff over 40 years, about 60 researchers and 50 workers and specialists should be annually employed at the Institute.

The analysis of the age structure of the staff shows that the share of active staff of 35-60 years old increases. At the same time, the share of employees younger than 35 years old decreases. It started in 2020-2021, including because they stopped employing junior students and instead, JINR scholarships at individual universities appeared.

The average age of all Institute employees as of 2024 is 52.6 years old. Researchers are 53.4 years old and researcher-engineers are 48.1 years old, with those of 30-40-year old slightly predominating in both categories. Among workers, the average age is 55.4 and most are of retirement or pre-retirement age, so the average age at the Institute continues to rise.

At the beginning of the year, the laboratories and services were surveyed about what kind of specialists they need. Almost every laboratory needs engineers: accelerator engineers, electronic engineers, others. Workers are needed: electricians, turners, assemblers, mechanists....

Speaking about the sources of recruiting young specialists, A. Verkheev emphasized that first of all, these are students that come to the Institute for diploma practice and then stay at JINR, they replenish the category of scientists and engineers. It is facilitated by the educational programmes of universities in cooperation with JINR and by the programmes of the UC. About 20 people are selected under specialized programmes for Postdoc & fellowship. Another permanent source of personnel recruitment is assignment of plenipotentiaries and here preference is given to young people.

Every year, 30-40 graduates from Russian universities, mainly from the basic departments of JINR are employed in JINR laboratories. 76 % of the new employees have had internships at JINR.

As of 1 January, 382 full-time employees have worked in Directorate (this number does not include part-time employees and those that come on short business trips). For the year 2024, 456 foreign employees worked in the staff of JINR Directorate. This year, there is an increase of 24 people, that is, it was possible to reverse the trend that occurred in 2022-2023. Last year, there was a significant increase in staff from Egypt and Vietnam, this year, scientists from Vietnam and Mongolia are expected.

In 2024, a staff development group was established in the department to change the human resource work in the Institute. Having collected applications, the group members place them on specialized platforms, organize interviews and actively participate in job fairs.

In 2024-2025, more than 20 vacancies were closed in this way.

Among the difficulties of staff recruitment were competitions from city enterprises, competitions for students, difficulties with deployment of staff.

D.V.Peshekhonov, S.N.Nedelko, A.I.Frank, T.A.Strizh, S.V.Shmatov, A.A.Baldin, and V.V.Korenkov took part in the discussion of these issues after the report.

Galina MYALKOVSKAYA