At the end of the year

Celebratory meeting of the MLIT team

On December 27, a Celebratory meeting of the laboratory staff dedicated to summarizing the results of activities in 2023 was held in the conference hall of the M.G. Meshcheryakov LIT.

- It is a great joy for me to come here today, to break away from thousands of papers that need to be signed at the end of the year, - JINR Director G.V.Trubnikov opened the meeting. - It's much more interesting here! I want to thank you for the year 2023, which you spent with honor, and wish you a Happy New Year! May there be reasons for joy in your families, all the good and kind will pass into the next year, and the bad will be forgotten.

- Your laboratory is dear to me, - said Vice-director of the Institute V.D.Kekelidze. - My scientific career began with LHE and LCTA, and I don't know where I spent more time then: here, counting nights at CDC and BESM, or in LHE? You always find yourself one step ahead, keep this front line, show us an example, and without you, all our projects are empty iron. Great victories, peaceful skies and creative successes!

- This year was unusual, full of events, scientific achievements, and hopes, - laboratory director S.V.Shmatov began to sum up the results of the outgoing year. - This year was also unusual for me, in a new status. The laboratory did not lose the wise leadership of V.V.Korenkov, T.A.Strizh, and J.Bush, they did not become advisers, but continued their active activities as playing coaches. Vladimir Vasilyevich remains the permanent head of this team. New, young people have appeared in new directions: the development of the Govorun supercomputer, the management of MICC, the development of data analysis and processing methods, the creation of the JINR digital ecosystem. Time will tell how successful this team will be.

Next, S.V.Shmatov focused on the most powerful aspects of the laboratory. These are distributed computing based on grid technologies - Tier1 and Tier2 sites - and cloud technologies. The supercomputer "Govorun" has received a serious increase in the GPU component this year. The total peak performance of the "Govorun" increased to 1.7 Pflops for calculations with double accuracy (3.4 Pflops for calculations with single accuracy). During the eighth session, the data set of the BM@N experiment was completed at the NICA accelerator complex. The director of MLIT described as unique the fact that the entire infrastructure of MLIT was used for a complete reconstruction of the events.

During the year, the laboratory staff published over 200 works, 5 monographs, and about 100 articles in the framework of international collaborations. S.V. Shmatov noted progress in the development of the JINR digital ecosystem, which, after the completion of test operation, started operating in full-scale mode.

- I want to wish everyone peace of mind, stability, self-confidence, and to do what everyone considers important for themselves and the Institute. Thank you very much! - Director MLIT concluded his speech.

"What does the coming year have in store for us?" - this is how the scientific director of MLIT V.V.Korenkov titled his report and began by calling 2023 a very important year for the laboratory of Information Technologies. This year, the 75th anniversary was celebrated by Soviet and Russian information technologies, so this is the year of summing up for the Laboratory. The memory of the founders of the laboratory - M.G.Meshcheryakov and N.N.Govorun - is preserved, albums are being reissued, films are being created, and the history and achievements of the laboratory itself have not yet been reflected. V.V.Korenkov outlined the directions of future work: to develop and strengthen the MICC; distributed environment - "this is our credo, we play a very important role in the computer infrastructure of CERN." Together with the Kurchatov Institute Research Center, we are thinking about creating a similar infrastructure in Russia. The speaker recalled that 12 PhD theses were defended in the dissertation Council on Information Technology and Computational Physics from 2020 to 2023 - "this is very small, we need to increase this number to 4-5 theses per year. I really want doctoral dissertations to be defended as well." The MLIT of student schools in information technology has shown great potential for involving bachelors and masters in the orbit of the laboratory's activities. The traditional grid conferences held by MLIT are of constant interest, and their topics are expanding from year to year.

- The strength of our laboratory is in the team spirit. Only such a team can do the things that are in front of us, and then success awaits us! - Vladimir Vasilyevich concluded his speech. - Creative success and optimism and, of course, great results, which we expect from you!

During the meeting, diplomas were awarded to the laureates of grants for young scientists and specialists of JINR and scholarships named after M.G. Meshcheryakov and N.N. Govorun. G.V. Trubnikov, congratulating the laureates, noted that this year the number of grants and their monetary content had been increased. JINR grants were received by young employees of LIT D.R.Badreeva, D.I.Pryakhina, A.O.Golunov, T.N.Zaikina, A.V.Ilyina, I.A.Sokolov. The laureates of the M.G.Meshcheryakov scholarship were V.Abgaryan, A.I.Anikina, M.V.Bashashin, D.Goderidze, I.S.Pelevanyuk, I.Satyshev, E.O.Tsamtsurov. The N.N.Govorun Scholarship was awarded to E.A.Grafov, A.V.Evlanov, I.I.Kalagin, I.A.Kashunin, E.S.Kuznetsova, T.V.Rozhkova, D.B.Stankus.

The foyer of the conference hall was decorated with archival issues of the LCTA "Impulse" wall newspaper, cartoons and humorous illustrations accompanied the report of S.V.Shmatov, and the cordial atmosphere that prevailed during the meeting never seemed to leave these walls.

Olga TARANTINA,
photo by Alexey VORONTSOV