RU 
EN 
CN 
ES 
Scientists of Samara University – Head of the Department of General and Theoretical Physics Vladimir Saleev, Associate Professor of the Department Anton Karpishkov, and Head of the Telecommunications Center Alexander Baskakov – participated in the Tenth Meeting of the international SPD NICA collaboration, held at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, a science town near Moscow. The meeting was timed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the concept of particle spin, celebrated in 2025, and brought together over 200 scientists and young specialists from Russia and abroad at JINR.
JINR Vice-Director, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Vladimir Kekelidze addressed the meeting participants with a welcoming speech, emphasizing in his address the importance of the successful implementation of the SPD experiment for world science. SPD collaboration co-spokesperson Alexey Guskov, in his report, outlined the collaboration's key priorities for 2025. These include finalizing the contract for manufacturing the magnet yoke, developing infrastructure for the cryogenic system, and producing superconducting cable for the solenoid. Alexey Guskov also noted that the JINR Particle Physics Program Advisory Committee, at its meeting in June 2025, highly appreciated the collaboration's progress in preparing the initial phase of the experiment. This year, collaboration participants presented about 40 reports at 15 international conferences. An important result of the work with young specialists was the defense of 18 bachelor's and master's theses performed on SPD-related topics.
Samara University has been an official member of the SPD NICA collaboration since 2021. The collaboration's research group includes Professor of the Department of General and Theoretical Physics Vladimir Saleev, Associate Professor Anton Karpishkov, Associate Professor Alexandra Shipilova, Head of the Telecommunications Center Alexander Baskakov, and postgraduate students of the department Lev Alimov and Kirill Shilyaev. During the meeting, Vladimir Saleev presented a report titled "Boer-Mulders effect in J/psi production at the SPD NICA". Anton Karpishkov presented a report titled "DDbar pair production and gluon TMD PDF in the proton".
The presentations by Samara scientists featured theoretical predictions for some of the most important processes for studying the proton spin and gluon distribution function in the proton – the production of hidden (charmonia) and open (D-mesons) charm, which will be studied by the SPD collaboration. In 2025, members of the SPD collaboration research group at Samara University published five scientific articles and delivered eight reports at scientific conferences on the topic of the SPD NICA project. Students from the Physics Faculty were also involved in SPD NICA-related work, defending three diploma projects directly dedicated to research in the future experiments of the SPD NICA collaboration.
The SPD NICA collaboration leadership particularly noted the active participation of the Samara group in developing the collaboration's IT infrastructure and the work of Samara University's computing cluster administrator, Alexander Baskakov. This summer, a computing cluster for remote calculations, simulations, and data processing within the SPD NICA experiment's GRID system was launched at the university. The Samara University computing center, along with the computing centers of JINR and the Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute, became one of the first three operational nodes of the future distributed IT infrastructure for the SPD NICA experiment.
Samara University is expanding its cooperation with JINR not only in the fields of high-energy physics research and information technology. Through close interaction with the JINR University Centre, preparations are underway to open a regional JINR Information Center at Samara University, based at the Department of General and Theoretical Physics. The main tasks of this center will be: organizing a popular science lecture series and career guidance for schoolchildren in the region towards choosing a scientific career in physics; supporting scientific internships for students and young specialists at JINR; organizing educational and methodological internships for students and young physics teachers at JINR under the "Teacher of the Future" program; informing staff of regional universities and scientific organizations about research conducted at JINR and opportunities for joint developments in a wide range of areas including high-energy physics, nuclear physics, condensed matter physics, biophysics, and information technologies.
For reference:
The SPD (Spin Physics Detector) experiment at the NICA (Nuclotron based Ion Collider fAcility) collider in Dubna near Moscow is aimed at studying the spin characteristics of elementary particles. The collider will bring beams of polarized protons and deuterons into collision with energies up to 13.5 GeV. The experiment will tackle tasks related to studying the quark-gluon structure of protons and deuterons: the nature and properties of their intrinsic quantum angular momentum – spin.
On the photo: SPD NICA collaboration co-spokesperson, Dr. Sci. (Phys.-Math.) Alexey Guskov, Head of the Department of General and Theoretical Physics, Dr. Sci. (Phys.-Math.) Vladimir Saleev, Associate Professor of the Department, Cand. Sci. (Phys.-Math.) Anton Karpishkov.
