Education for Competitiveness Operational Programme

On July 1, 2012 a new grant project “Long-term support for high quality research in the field of extreme states of nuclear matter” has started at NPI CAS. This three-year project is funded by the European Social Fund (ESF) in the Czech Republic and is a part of the ESF programme “Education for Competitiveness Operational Programme” (ECOP). The main aim of this grant project is a long-term support of high quality scientific research in the field of extreme states of nuclear matter at NPI.

This field of physics has at NPI long tradition and belongs to the most successful and dynamically developing directions of modern nuclear physics. Scientists involved in the grant project are actively participating in two large international experiments: the ALICE experiment at the LHC accelerator at the European laboratory for particle physics (CERN) in Switzerland and the STAR experiment at Brookhaven national laboratory in the U.S.A. Both experiments are at the forefront in studies of properties of nuclear matter at extreme conditions of high temperature and density, conditions similar to those which existed in Universe few millionths of a second after the Big Bang.

The key participants in the project are two internationally renowned scientists, a foreign scientist Dr. Jozef Ferencei and a re-integrating Czech scientist Dr. Jan Rak. One of the goals of the project is a long-term integration of both scientists in the team of ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions at NPI. Active participation of these two experts in the research programme at NPI will also increase competitiveness of young scientists, graduate and undergraduate students in Europe and all around the world and will enable them to establish themselves in large international collaborations such as ALICE or STAR.

For persons interested in physics of nuclear matter at extreme conditions several workshops with participation of foreign scientists, local theorists and members of the grant team will be organized. To further promote popularization of scientific research, seminars for undergraduate and graduate students will be organized as well and students will be informed about possibilities of experimental study of matter under extreme conditions at NPI CAS.

Information about all activities connected with the project can be found at the project webpage http://gemma.ujf.cas.cz/~adamova/OPVK.v1/home.html.