From 6 to 11 July 2015 a Laboratory of High Energies (LHE) of a Joint Institute for Nuclear Research has held an international conference “Strangeness in quark matter” (SQM-2015). It was held in Russia for the first time!

This is one of the most prestigious and important conferences on physics of nuclear matter under extreme conditions of high temperatures and densities. The conference was attended by more than 250 scientists from all continents. It included presentation of the latest data obtained in experiments at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN and at a Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory in the USA. 42 plenary reports, more than 100 performances on five parallel sessions and 43 posters reflected the current state of research and identified areas of scientific research for years to come.

MEPhI staff presented 5 reports at parallel sessions and one plenary report. It is recognition of a large contribution of the Institute to international mega collaborations: STAR and PHENIX at RHIC, ATLAS and ALICE at the Large hadron Collider at CERN.

SQM-2015 was preceded and accompanied by the important event – Helmholtz International Summer School “Dense Matter 2015”, which opened on the 29th of June, and lasted for two weeks. 56 students and 16 lecturers of this school participated in the conference as well. The school was attended by 11 students and postgraduates of MEPhI. 6 students of the Department № 40 stayed in Dubna to undertake summer internship in groups to analyze data from experiments STAR ( RHIC) and MPD (NICA).

More details on the conference and school, content of presentations and lectures can be found on the conference website http://sqm.jinr.ru/ and school website http://theor.jinr.ru/~diastp/dm15/.