Talks with scientists

Vladimir KORENKOV:
"I dreamed about the Institute of Physical Education,
yet I have been working at JINR for almost half a century
and at the Dubna University - for 25 years

Anna Epstein, a graduate of Dubna Lyceum No.6 and then of the Faculty of Journalism of Moscow State University that began her journalistic work in Dubna, presents an interview with a scientist in our newspaper.

In this interview, the Scientific Leader of MLIT of JINR Vladimir Vasilievich Korenkov (by the way, this year he was awarded the medal of the Order "For Services to the Fatherland", 2nd degree and was awarded the honorary title "Honored Scientist of the Moscow Region") talks about the projects "Digital JINR" and "Digital university", as well as about education in the field of big data analytics, about talented students and graduates of Dubna University, about how he himself became a student of the Computing and Mathematics Complex of Moscow State University, although he was preparing for a sports career and even for the Olympic Games!

"I entered Moscow State University by accident," Vladimir Vasilievich says. "And I came to Dubna by accident. And then, while working at JINR, I had absolutely no intention of teaching."

There is a lot of randomness in Korenkov's life. However, as philosophers say, any accident is an unknown pattern.

In general, the conversation with Vladimir Vasilyevich turned out to be comprehensive, both about IT technologies and about twists of fate.

- Vladimir Vasilievich, can we say that a new stage of cooperation between Dubna University and JINR is now starting?

- This is true. The first area is the large infrastructure for research and teaching that we are developing. We are ready for the MLIT software and hardware environment to be used to train students at Dubna University more effectively than it is now.

The second area is related to the development of "Digital JINR" (digital services for JINR). We agreed with Vice-Rector for Digital Development at the Dubna University Andrey Nechaevsky that in parallel with the "Digital JINR" a "Digital University" will be developed.

Please, tell us what "Digital JINR" and "Digital University" are?

- This is a set of services and platforms that are developed in order to digitize all business processes. Any request, document, visa of the head of the department, director of the laboratory, or memo can be received electronically. Our goal is to make sure that employees don't have to walk around their offices with papers and wait for someone's signature. The main goal of developing the "Digital JINR" and the "Digital University" is to save time, increase efficiency and optimize processes.

I am now part of a working group to develop the "Science and Innovation" domain that should unite all activities related to scientific and educational services and bring them into a more or less unified form. This will be a national environment. We want the "Digital JINR" and the "Digital University" to be seamlessly united to this environment in the future. And in this Russian environment, we want to make prototypes for a corporate research centre and a corporate university, test this system, so that later, we can replicate it and develop typical corporate portals, not even portals, ecosystems for other universities and research centres.

MLIT JINR and Institute of System Analysis and Management (ISAM) of the Dubna University have joint master's programmes. Please, tell us about them.

- These are two master's programmes: "Digital Platforms and Big Data Analytics" and "Mathematical Modeling and Data Analysis." They are aimed at training specialists for JINR in digital platforms related to big data analytics and computing for megascience projects.

Most students in these programmes do their master's theses on the basis of MLIT. We are interested in them entering the graduate school in the future and remaining to work for us. At JINR there is now a good position for graduate students - research intern and we hire graduate students for this position full time.

- In an interview in 2018, you said that in the near future one of the most popular areas will be big data analytics, but not a single Russian university trains employees in this area. Was the international IT school "Big Data Analytics", developed at Dubna University conceived to somehow change this situation?

- We developed two IT schools at once. One - at the Plekhanov Russian University of Economics, where I am the Head of the Laboratory of Cloud Technologies and Big Data Analytics. There we realized that economics without good computer science is not very effective. Economists should have good tools for analyzing information in order to make forecasts in regional and financial policy.

And the "IT school" at the Dubna University was initially a need for JINR, for JINR needs very high-level specialists, primarily for mega-science projects. We have extensive experience in training specialists to work at the Large Hadron Collider. The NICA megascience project requires the same approaches, competencies, knowledge and scale. Today, the "IT School" at the Dubna University has other partner companies, not only JINR.

You have been teaching at Dubna University since 1997. At that time, you were Deputy Director of LHTA (that was the name of MLIT JINR until 2000). Why did you start teaching?

- I did not want to work at the university and did not intend to engage in any activity other than research. But at that moment, I received a call from LHTA employee Petr Pavlovich Sychev that was leaving on a business trip and asked me to replace him at the university during his departure and teach the subject "Databases". This was not my topic and I refused. And then, just before 1 September, the university called me and asked: "Why don't you come to register?" I replied that I hadn't promised anything to anyone. The girl on the phone said: "Okay, that means we're lost." That's how I started working at the university almost against my will.

A great story! By the way, Petr Pavlovich Sychev said in an interview that future programmers should read Gogol, because "it shakes stereotypes and expands the horizon." What writers would you recommend your students to read?

- Gogol, of course, suggests itself, but I don't want to repeat myself. Perhaps, Umberto Eco. I've been reading him the most lately. It seems to me that he has a lot of imagination and non-standard solutions.

Are you proud of your students, ISAM graduates?

- I have many students who I am proud of. They are not only those that work in our laboratory. Such as, Anar Manafov that after having graduated from the university went to Darmstadt and worked on visualization and grid technologies. He became one of the leading experts in the field of distributed computing in Germany.

Many former students became employees of our laboratory and today work at JINR, such as three graduates of the first class of ISAM Roman Semenov, Artem Petrosyan and Christina Moisenz. It's always interesting with them.

Why did you go into IT yourself? Tell your story.

- Accidentally. I was actually an athlete at school. I was involved in track and field decathlon. I trained twice a day and was in the Olympic reserve. My best result was in the long jump - 7 m 50 cm. But once in the tenth grade, I unsuccessfully pole vaulted and broke both arms. It was a tragedy. I walked with two casts. I had to go somewhere. I wanted to go to the Institute of Physical Education...

At the graduation party, a classmate said: "We'll go to Moscow State University, tomorrow is the last day to submit documents." We walked all night and in the morning, we prepared our documents and took the first train to Moscow. On the way, I asked a friend what faculty we were entering? He says, after all, we are from a mathematical school; Moscow State University has Mechanics and Mathematics, Computational Mathematics and Cybernetics (CMC). We didn't know what it was. We decided that we would go to the faculty that was closer to the underground. That's how I started my studies at CMC.

- How did you get to Dubna?

- Also by chance. In the fourth year, we had a special course "Experimental Data Processing", taught by Nikolay Nikolaevich Govorun. And Nikolay Nikolaevich was Deputy Director of LHTA of JINR. And so he invited a group of students to Dubna to cover the topics that we hadn't had time to cover. Early on Saturday morning, we arrived by train to Dubna. Nikolay Nikolaevich took us around Dubna, around JINR all day, showing us the synchrophasotron and LHTA. I really liked the city, the special air of Dubna. And of course, the enthusiasm of Nikolay Nikolaevich Govorun!

Since 1976, I have been working at JINR for almost 50 years.

In the early 1970s, Dubna was considered to be the third computer capital of Russia after Moscow and Novosibirsk. Perhaps, LHTA played an important role here, didn't it?

- LHTA was developed in 1966 - 10 years after the establishment of JINR. For, it became clear that nuclear and particle physics cannot develop without the use of computer technology. The first director of the laboratory was Mikhail Grigorievich Meshcheryakov and his deputy and the soul of the team - Nikolay Nikolaevich Govorun.

The laboratory very quickly made Dubna the IT capital of the Soviet Union. Then the most famous machine of the USSR BESM-6 appeared. And Nikolay Nikolaevich Govorun gathered around him specialists that came from everywhere to dress this car. BESM-6 came to JINR in 1968. The first translator from the Fortran language was developed, headed by Govorun. Govorun was a person that headed the area related to the automation of scientific research at the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union. And the laboratory very quickly became popular in the field of information technologies in the USSR.

What do you think MLIT JINR means today on a national scale?

- I think, MLIT is one of the most interesting computer centres. And even a unique centre. I'll explain why. There are very powerful supercomputer centres in the world. But if this is a supercomputer centre, then it deals only with supercomputer technologies. There are centres that deal with grid technology and there are quite a few of them. There are centres that deal with cloud computing and the provision of cloud services. There are centres that have a powerful information storage system. But there is not a single centre in the world that simultaneously has a powerful supercomputer centre, a grid technology centre, a cloud technology centre and a data storage centre. And a centre that can integrate all this. This is MLIT. We have all the listed components at a very good level. Each of them may not be the best in the world, but diversity is the main means of their integration.

By the way, all integration is carried out by MLIT employees that have graduated from ISAM. If we talk about Artem Petrosyan or Igor Pelevanyuk, they are some of the best specialists in the world in integrating such infrastructure. It's nice that they are graduates of Dubna University.