INFORMATION MEETING ABOUT SESAME (SYNCHROTRON-LIGHT FOR EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE AND APPLICATIONS IN THE MIDDLE EAST) A CALL for PARTNERSHIPS Room XII, UNESCO Headquarters, 18 DECEMBER 2018 Provisional Programme 3 p.m. - 5 p.m. Welcome by UNESCO Ms Flavia Schlegel, Assistant Director-General for Natural Sciences Structure of the meeting Chair: Professor Rolf Heuer, President of the SESAME Council What is SESAME? A short film about SESAME SESAME: The first synchrotron light source in the region Speaker: Professor Khaled Toukan, Director of SESAME Hosting SESAME: Accomplishments and motivation Speaker: H.E. Mr Bisher Hani Al-Khasawneh, Permanent Delegate of Jordan to UNESCO (appointed) SESAME’s science Speaker: Dr Esen Ercan Alp, Chair, Scientific Advisory Committee of SESAME The European Commission/European Union hand-in-hand with SESAME Speaker: Commissioner Carlos Moedas, Research, Science and Innovation, European Commission SESAME: The first Associate of LEAPS (League of European Accelerator-Based Photon Sources) Speaker: Professor Andrew Harrison, CEO, Diamond Light Source (UK) Why Turkey’s investment in SESAME? Speaker: Dr Zehra Sayers, Sabanci University (Turkey) What SESAME does for our research: Users’ perspective (a) Speaker – a user of the XAFS/XRF beamline: Dr Muhammad Younas, Electronic and Magnetic Materials Group, PINSTECH (Pakistan Institute of Nuclear Science and Technology), Pakistan (b) Speaker – a user of the IR beamline: Dr Gehan Ahmed, National Research Center, Egypt Questions from the floor Closing of the meeting Professor Rolf Heuer, President of the SESAME Council, Flavia Schlegel, Assistant Director-General for Natural Sciences SESAME AT A GLANCE (Information Note) SESAME is an intergovernmental science centre in Allan (Jordan) set up under the auspices of UNESCO on the model of CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) that formally came into existence in April 2004. Its Members are currently Cyprus, Egypt, Iran (Islamic Republic of), Israel, Jordan, Pakistan, Palestine and Turkey. The Observers are Brazil, Canada, China (People’s Republic of), France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Portugal, Russian Federation, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK, and USA, in addition to CERN and the European Union. SESAME will enable research in fields ranging from medicine and biology, through materials science, physics and chemistry to healthcare and archaeology - much focussed on issues of regional and international importance, e.g. related to the environment, cultural heritage, health, and agriculture. The laboratory was officially opened by His Majesty King Abdullah II on 16 May 2017. Two of the suite of seven Phase I beamlines came into operation in 2018 and in July the first users started to use SESAME for their experiments. One hundred and three applications for beam time on these two beamlines have been received in response to SESAME’s second call for applications in September 2018. A third and fourth beamline are expected to come on stream relatively soon and plans are beginning for the remaining three. SESAME is to be the first accelerator in the world to be powered entirely by renewable energy. The collaboration of over 1,000 scientists (including many PhD students) who will use SESAME is expected to: • Foster world-class scientific research in the Middle East, neighbouring countries and beyond; • Build cross-border collaboration, dialogue and understanding between scientists with diverse cultural, political and religious backgrounds; and • Help reverse the brain drain that is holding back science education and research in the region and neighbouring countries. In November 2018, SESAME became the first Associate of LEAPS (League of European Accelerator- Based Photon Sources) a strategic consortium formed in 2017 that consists of sixteen operating European Synchrotron Radiation (SR) and Free Electron Laser (FEL) user research infrastructures. More information about SESAME is available at http://www.sesame.org.jo/sesame_2018/ .