From 7th to 9th of September 2016 the All-Russia Science Festival NAUKA 0+, was taking place on the basis of leading capital universities, museums and research centres. This year JINR debuted in the festival and presented at the premises of MSU and Expocentre two fascinating expositions illustrating the main research directions and flagship projects of the Institute laboratories. The goal of JINR participation is to popularize science among the widest possible audience: school students, their parents, university students, post-graduate students and mass media representatives.

At the JINR stand at Expocentre visitors of all ages, among which children prevailed, had the opportunity to observe and take part in the experiments in physics and chemistry (with liquid nitrogen, dry ice etc.), to get acquainted with JINR activities as well as try their luck at contests where winners were awarded with JINR souvenirs. Robotics workshops were held by children and their monitors from the team headed by Peter Shirkov, JINR young scientists and staff members Anastasia Zlotnikova, Victoria Tokareva, Dmitry Dryablov, Michael Zhabitsky, Dmitry Tsirkov, Vadim Skoi. The Expocentre display provided information about JINR and thanks to the interactive touch tables and the plasma display panel little visitors were able to broaden their horizon in the field of natural sciences by means of mind games and educational programmes.

At JINR exposition at MSU representatives of all the laboratories were involved, including: Alexander Karpov, Aleksey Voynov, Aleksey Bazhazhin and Oleg Kunchenko from the Veksler and Baldin Laboratory of High Energy Physics, Mariya Phomina, Mark Shirchenko, Nikolay Anfimov, Arthur Borodin, Sergey Sokolov, and Taras Rezinko from the Dzhelepov Laboratory of Nuclear Problems, Victor Bodnarchuk, Egor Lychagin and Anton Rutkauskas from the Frank Laboratory of Neutron Physics, Yuri Severyukhin from the Laboratory of Radiation Biology, Oksana Koval, Aleksandra Friesen, Alexander Andreev from the Bogoliubov Laboratory of Theoretical Physics and Igor Pelevanyuk from the Laboratory of Information Technologies.

Photo by Elena Karpova

For the first time at MSU premises JINR presented the mock-ups of flagship projects, namely: the replicas of multifunctional detector from the NICA collider, which is under construction, of heavy-ion cyclotron U-400 and of IBR-2 reactor, the miniature of the deep-submergence neutrino telescope used in the Baikal experiment as well as the calorimeter, used in the COMPASS experiment in order to study the structure and spectroscopy of hadrons.

Photo by Elena Karpova

The chairman of the organizing committee was JINR Director Victor Matveev and the co-chairman – Stanislav Pakuliak, supported by the JINR International Cooperation Department represented by Anastasia Suschevich and Adelina Kazakova.

The organizers of the All-Russia Science Festival were the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, the Moscow City Government and the Lomonosov Moscow State University.

During the festival both the participants and the visitors unanimously noted the increasing interest in science, scientific activities and occupations. The programme of events of the festival was very intensive and the atmosphere – energetic, bright and friendly. According to the statistics, about 840 thousand people annualy attend the festival in Moscow and approximately 2 million people all over Russia.

The organizing committee expresses its particular gratitude to Tatyana Ivanova (Administration Services Office) and Andey Nehaev (Motor Transport Service).