A five-day international Scientific Conference “XXVI Workshop of Nuclear Physics” was held in Kazimierz Dolny on 24-29 September 2019. The leading topic of this year’s workshop referred to the key issues and challenges of modern physics of the atomic nucleus and, in particular, the structure and dynamics of nuclear processes.

For more than 20 years, this conference has gathered about a hundred of renowned and respected physicist from around the world dealing with theory and experiment in the field of physics of atomic nucleus. Also this year we have hosted almost 80 scientists, including over 50 from abroad, such as the USA, China, Russia, France, Italy, Germany, Sweden, the Czech Republic and Lithuania. Among them HIL employees delivered 5 papers:

• Eryk Pisecki- “Dissipation and tunneling in heavy-ion reactions around the Coulomb barier”
• Krzysztof Rusek- “Neutron clusters in light, exotic nuclei- do we need nuclear theory at all? “
• Paweł Napiorkowski – “Coulomb excitation: experiment and theory coexistence. “
• Leszek Próchniak   – “Octupole degrees of freedom- formal background and some phenomenology. “
• Julian Srebrny     – “Quadrupole triaxiality softness. From simple phenomenological models to fully microscopic General Bohr Hamiltonia

With a regular 26-year-old workshop that creates the ideal atmosphere for establishing and expanding scientific cooperation with leading institutes from the country and abroad, theoretical research on the fundamental components of the universe’s matter with the participation of Lublin nuclear physicist with extensive international cooperation is carried out at the Department of Theoretical Physics (KFT) UMCS at the highest world level.

This is confirmed by the ever-increasing number of high-scoring scientific publications and numerous invitations to lecture at the international conferences of researchers from the KFT, as well as the increase in the number of participants at these Workshops over the past few years.

It should also be stressed that the vast majority of UMCS graduate students in this field have found employment in research and teaching positions in national and foreign scientific units.

This year’s workshop also became an occasion to celebrate the five decades of scientific work of Prof. Krzysztof Pomorski, who is considered the main creator of the so-called “The Lublin School of Nuclear Physics” established at the Institute of Physics UMCS. The scientific research of Professor Pomorski relates to the overall structure of atomic nuclei, the dynamics of nuclear fusion and decay processes, collective phenomena in the nuclei, the study of the stability of the superheavy nuclei and many more detailed Physics issues. It is worth realizing that the atomic nuclei, built of protons and neutrons, represent more than 99.9% of the mass of known matter of the universe.

The professor is the author of more than 320 scientific publications created in cooperation with research centres in Poland, Germany, France, Russia and 5 books and manuals. He is also a laureate of prestigious awards, such as the Smoluchowski Medal awarded by the Polish Physical Society in 2011, the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta in 1989, awards: Individual and collective granted by the Ministry of National Education and the Ministry of Science and Higher Education between 1995 and 2003 and the award of the French Ministry of Education in 2000. In the current year, Prof. Krzysztof Pomorski and his research group received a prestigious grant to study the theoretical fission process of atomic nuclei in the new Polish-Chinese program SHENG-1 for almost 1.5 million PLN, funded together by the National Science Centre of China. The funding of this grant allows three doctoral scholarships to be financed for a period of 33 months and one two-year post-doctoral fellowship at the Institute of Physics as well as the development of cooperation with the leading centres of nuclear physics in Beijing.

Finally, let’s add that the next 27 edition of the workshop of the nuclear physics in Kazimierz Dolny will be held in the last week of September 2020 of the year.

The workshops “Nuclear Physics Research-Technology coaction 2” and brokerage meetings “Nuclear Physics Innovation” were organised in Sevilla, Spain on November 6-8, 2019 by the Heavy Ion Laboratory of the University of Warsaw (HIL) and Centro Nacional de Aceleradores (CNA) as part of the Nuclear activity Physics Innovation ENSAR2 (NuPIA-ENSAR2). During the workshop brokerage meetings were organized by the DELab UW Enterprise Europe Network and Agencia Andaluza del Conocimiento Junta de Andalucia.

The event was addressed to scientists, technologists, laboratories and companies dealing with nuclear physics and related technologies.

During the workshop there were presented the latest achievements of technologies such as: accelerators, particle detectors, vacuum systems, electronics, data processing, isotope production, irradiation, PET imaging, dosimetry, environmental radioactivity, radiation therapy, proton therapy.

The main goal of the workshop was to intensify the process of technology transfer, research and development cooperation as well as scientific and innovative activities:

• presentation of the latest scientific achievements in the field of nuclear technologies that can be implemented in industry;
• demonstrate industry achievements in the field of new devices and tools that can be used in nuclear research;
• identifying the needs for key nuclear technologies for innovative products, processes and services;
• organising broker meetings to facilitate networking, cooperation and exchange of ideas between research laboratories and companies in the field of nuclear physics;
• discuss the existing sustainability gap and priorities to optimise research and technology efforts;
• discussions were held about challenges and opportunities in new areas of science and industry, and activities to intensify cooperation between laboratories and industry in the area of ​​developing European innovative products, processes and services based on nuclear technologies.

During the workshop, 25 presentations were presented. They are focused on aspects of cooperation between science and industry. Presentations of research institutions were concentrated on capabilities of available infrastructure and services offered to industry, scientific presentations on new discoveries that may lead to or require new industrial products. Companies presented new products that may be useful in a current research and  demonstrated examples of successful cooperation between research institutions and industry.

Full agenda of the workshop is available on the NUPIA webpage.

During the workshop, 31 bilateral meetings (brokerage meetings) were organized between researchers and companies in which 23 participants took part. The purpose of bilateral meetings was to establish initial contacts that may or may not lead to further research cooperation and to intensify the transfer of innovative technologies.

Representatives of the following workshops and brokerage meetings:

• Laboratories, research centres: ENRESA, CEA, CSIC, CNA, FLNR JINR, GANIL, HIL UW, IFC, IPNE, LNL, UCM, UM, USC.
• Industry: ANTEC Magnets, AVS, DVC, ELI Beamlines, ELYTT ENERGY, INEUSTAR, Nucleopolis, SUPRASYS, TTI NORTE.