For 12 years, the START student program has been supporting young scientists in the early stages of their scientific careers. In December 2025, the Summer session concluded, the list of participants for the 2026 Winter session was published, and application collection for the Summer session will begin on February 1.
In 2025, 78 students participated in the two sessions of the programme. Most of the students, 40, were studying at universities in Russia; 12 came to Dubna from Egypt, 7 from Cuba, 4 each from Turkey and Uzbekistan, 2 each from South Africa, Tunisia, Vietnam, and Mexico, and 1 each from Belarus, Indonesia, and Spain. The number of countries participating in START has reached 31. Students from universities in Tunisia, Turkey, Indonesia, and Spain participated in the programme for the first time. The total number of students who have completed the programme over the years has reached 527. Ninety JINR staff members participated in the programme's work in 2025, and a total of 255 staff members are registered on the programme website and are ready to work.
Based on many years of experience, most students who have completed the START programme establish scientific connections with their supervisors and continue to collaborate. Some START alumni plan to prepare their theses at JINR and find employment at the Institute. On average, every sixth participant joins the Institute's team. Below are some of the successes of START the participants in 2025.
Tunisian student Minyar Laouini, who worked at the Laboratory of Nuclear Problems under the supervision of Ayagoz Baimukhanova on the project "Molecular Identification of Sponges by PCR and Electrophoresis, and Experimental Determination of Distribution," participated in the fall AYSS conference with the results obtained during her START internship.
Anastasia Ponomareva, a student at Don State University and a protégé of Ekaterina Klevtsova from VBLHEP, returned to Dubna after completing her START internship to participate in the Baldin Seminar in September 2025, where she presented an oral report. Upon returning home, student Liana Sleptsova from the University of Yakutia, who completed an internship under the supervision of Marina Vladimirovna Frontasyeva, participated in the International Student Conference with a presentation on her work at JINR and independently contributed a paper to the conference proceedings based on her internship results. Her work was highly valued by the university administration and her mentor at JINR. A news article about Liana's work was published on the university website:
Summer session project supervisors reported that, based on the results of this work, twelve more joint publications are being prepared, co-authored with START participants: Ibrahim Sheimaa (Egypt), Lola Rizakulova and Faizullo Kuyliev (Uzbekistan), Jeannine Milanes Losa América (Mexico), Matvey Vologzhin, Anastasia Ponomareva, Danila Arbuzov, Vladimir Gorev, Ksenia Gavrilenko, Fedor Baykov, Sergey Serga, Stepan Cherepanov (Russia), and Ege Can Karanfil (Turkey).
START 2024 participant Ozoda Inoyatillo from Uzbekistan has been hired in Sector No. 2 of the Calorimetric and Hardware-Software Systems for Processing and Analysis of Physical Information at the Laboratory of Nuclear Problems.
Upon completion of the internship, three students were accepted to JINR-based departments: Diana Volobueva entered the Dubna branch of Moscow State University, Anastasia Semenova – St. Petersburg State University, Anton Markov became a fourth-year student of the Particles Department at Moscow State University.
Summing up the year, we would like to note that START has been and remains an effective tool for attracting talented young people to science in general and to JINR in particular. The work continues. Thirty students have been selected for the 2026 Winter session and will arrive in Dubna in February.
From February 1 to March 3, applications for the START 2026 summer session will be accepted on start.jinr.ru. We invite project supervisors and students to participate.
