The NICA Project at JINR Dubna

New scientific program is proposed at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna aimed at study of hot and dense baryonic matter in the wide energy range from 2 GeV/amu to √sNN = 11 GeV, and investigation of the nucleon spin structure with the maximum polarized protons and deuterons energy in the c.m. 27 GeV (for protons). To implement this program the development of JINR’s accelerator facility in high energy physics has started. This facility is based on the existing superconducting synchrotron - Nuclotron. The program foresees both experiments at beams extracted from the Nuclotron, and construction of an ion collider - the Nuclotron-based Ion Collider fAcility (NICA)