The MexNICA collaboration is a consortium formed by researchers and students from five Mexican institutions working within the NICA-MPD. During the last three years we have defined a solid scientific program that includes the design and construction of two detectors: a fast TOF trigger and a beam-monitoring detector. The program also includes exploring signals to characterize the kind of matter formed in heavy-ion collisions, using the MPD capabilities. In this talk I briefly survey some of the challenges we have faced and address the opportunities that a long-term involvement within this international collaboration opens up to continue exploring the properties of nuclear matter under extreme conditions.

Theory and Phenomenology