With tangible evidence of increasing and broadening mutual collaboration, a four-day event concluded today for the 50th anniversary of Cuba’s incorporation into the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR), in Dubna, the so-called scientific city near Moscow.

At the final commemorative act of the anniversary, held at the Hotel Nacional de Cuba and attended by Armando Rodríguez Batista, the Cuban Minister of Science, Technology and Environment, and other invited personalities, Russian experts highlighted the value of Cuban experiences and their applications, acquired at that centre of excellence on the banks of the Volga River, and expressed their interest in Havana being their best representative for Latin America and the Caribbean.

Several of them, members of a delegation of over 50 scientists attending the commemoration, agreed on the necessity and confidence that Cuba be the guiding element in promoting their current research projects and those they will sign with national specialised centres.

Gonzalo Walwyn Salas, Director General of the Centre for Radiation Protection and Hygiene and Plenipotentiary Representative of the Republic of Cuba at that prestigious academic institution, recalled that since his country’s incorporation, more than 300 compatriots have passed through its centres.

Some as researchers in advanced science and technology programmes or as young students training in specialities of theoretical and experimental physics, radiochemistry, nanotechnology and computer sciences, he explained.

He added that in the last two decades, collaboration between the two has experienced significant strengthening, involving 11 Cuban institutions in applied projects in the characterisation of nanomaterials, study of radio-sensitivity in tumours, use of biophysical models to combat brain diseases, production of membranes, studies of radiation detectors and of diagnostic systems used in nuclear medicine.

The five decades since Cuba’s incorporation as a full member of JINR, which occurred on 26 March 1976, included for the first time meetings of the Committee of Plenipotentiary Representatives of the Governments of the Member States and of the Finance Committee, held on the 1st and 2nd of December in Varadero, Matanzas.

Additionally, at the HN Hotel Capri, the JINR-Cuba International School on Hadronic Structure and Hadronic Matter Physics, and the Latin American Seminar for the development of scientific-technical collaboration in the nuclear sphere between Latin America and the Caribbean.