On 12 October, as part of the Quantum Computing and Machine Learning (QCML) workshop in Cairo, the Egyptian Academy of Scientific Research and Technology (ASRT) held a meeting dedicated to organizing a joint internship for students from the Arab Republic of Egypt and the Republic of South Africa.

Фото: © ASRT

Among the participants of the event, which served as a preliminary meeting of the responsible persons of the future JINR Joint School for Africa, were Plenipotentiary Representative of the Government of Egypt at JINR, ASRT President Gina El-Feky, ASRT International Cooperation Coordinator Rana Refai, South Africa-JINR Cooperation Coordinator, Deputy Director of the NRF iThemba LABS cyclotron laboratory (South Africa) Rudolph Nchodu, Director of the JINR University Centre Dmitry Kamanin, and Deputy Head of the JINR International Cooperation Department Elena Badawy. Director of the Meshcheryakov Laboratory of Information Technologies at JINR Sergei Shmatov, and MLIT Scientific Secretary Olga Derenovskaia took part in the discussion as invited experts.

Internships at JINR for students from Egypt and South Africa have always attracted a large number of young researchers from these countries, facilitating career guidance in future scientific endeavours and expanding the geography of JINR’s collaboration with universities and research organizations. The meeting participants discussed their experience in holding student internships and agreed to start preparing for the joint internship, synchronise student selection, conduct preparatory activities, and welcome a joint team of African students to JINR in the second half of June or early July 2026.

National student schools will take place in January-February 2026 for the preliminary training of students from Egypt and South Africa. Lecturers from Cairo and Cape Town will deliver some of the lectures to both groups simultaneously. Classes at the schools will follow a synchronised curriculum, utilising local resources for workshops. The organizers noted that the Virtual Laboratory could be one of these tools.

Additional meetings will take place between the schools and the students’ arrival in Dubna, with some aimed at assigning the students to projects in advance and determining future scientific supervisors. The programme will be available for other interested African countries.

SAINTS@tlabs (Southern African Institute of Nuclear Technology and Sciences), a physics summer school at iThemba LABS with considerable experience in the field, will host the national school in South Africa. In Egypt, the event will take place at universities collaborating with JINR. Further organizational tasks related to the internships will be managed through the JINR Information Centres and the University Centre.

“The University Centre has accumulated extensive experience putting the motto, ‘science brings nations together’, into practice through international student internships for the Member States and Associate Members. This June, for the first time, we purposefully invited two of the most active users of this career guidance tool for young scientists, South Africa and Egypt, to hold a joint internship. The coordinators of Information Centres in Cairo and Cape Town, who accompanied the students, noted that this served as an interesting educational bridge connecting the north and south of the African continent. We agreed to move forward and synchronise preparations for the internship, which will allow us to exchange experience and ideas, engage in existing joint projects more effectively, better prepare students for their summer visit to JINR, and perhaps even introduce them to each other in advance. The recent ASRT meeting was the beginning of the preparation of this updated format, which we hope will be a worthy contribution to the celebration of JINR’s 70th anniversary,” Dmitry Kamanin summarised the discussion at ASRT.

“We established strong scientific ties with iThemba LABS in computing and data processing for the SPD Experiment at the NICA Collider. In addition, we are looking forward to enhancing our collaboration as part of joint scientific projects and with representatives of Egyptian research organizations. The task of training qualified personnel is among of the most urgent ones, and we are ready to share our experience in holding the JINR IT School to improve both UC youth internship and JINR’s joint African internship,” MLIT Director Sergei Shmatov commented on his participation in the meeting.

The QCML workshop took place in Cairo on 11–14 October 2025, bringing together scientists from Armenia, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Georgia, and Russia. MLIT JINR and ASRT organized the event.