The “Horia Hulubei” National Institute of Physics and Nuclear Engineering (IFIN-HH)

The “Horia Hulubei” National Institute of Physics and Nuclear Engineering (IFIN-HH) is standing at the forefront of Romanian science both in terms of research infrastructures and research personnel, providing over 10% of the national scientific output. Following the tradition initiated by the founder Professor Horia Hulubei, the IFIN-HH addresses a wide spectrum of research and development activities in fundamental and applied research areas including Nuclear Physics and Astrophysics, Particle Physics, Atomic Physics, Life and Environmental Physics, Theoretical Physics, Nuclear Techniques, and Advanced Communication Systems.

IFIN-HH has a staff of 688 employees, which include 307 R&D personnel, 235 PhD and 21 PhD advisors. This makes the IFIN-HH fully compliant with the political, scientific, and managerial requirements prevailing in the European space. To turn its strength to the best account, the institute concentrates its resources in two areas: (a) to steadily develop a sound in-house capability to get to and stay at the forefront of nuclear science and technology; and (b) to substantively participate in the European collaborative endeavors centered on Large Scale Facilities such as GSI-Darmstadt (Germany), GANIL-Caen (France), CERN (Geneva), JINR (Dubna).

IFIN-HH will continue to develop its infrastructure, manpower, and expertise. Bringing bright young people at the frontiers of science and blending their enthusiasm with the experience and educated tenacity of the elders, is be-lieved to be a sure recipe for the long-term sustainability of the IFIN-HH activities. In line with this, IFIN-HH is leading the realization of the Extreme Light In-frastructure – Nuclear Physics (ELI-NP), the Romanian research centre part of the European distributed infrastructure ELI. This will be based on two main pieces of research equipment, a laser system that will produce two 10PW beams, and a gamma beam system that will produce highly collimated, high intensity gamma radiation with tunable energy up to 20MeV. Using at the same time both high intensity gamma and laser beams, the materials behaviour in extreme radiation conditions will be studied.