About SESAME

The SESAME Project is constructing the Middle East's first major international research centre as a cooperative venture by the scientists and governments of the region. It is being developed under the umbrella of UNESCO, which formally approved the recommendation that the Centre be set up under its auspices at a meeting of the UNESCO Executive Board on May 30 2002. SESAME is located in Allaan, Jordan (30 km from Amman and 30 km from the King Hussein/Allenby Bridge crossing of the Jordan River). Jordan was selected as the site in a competition among seven countries from the region. A building to house the facility is nearing completion on this site with funds provided by Jordan. [see www.sesame.org.jo]

UNESCO is the depository of the Statutes of the SESAME Centre. They came into force when the required six Members notified UNESCO of their wish to join the Centre and their acceptance of the Statutes. These Members have formed a permanent Council. Present Council Members are Bahrain, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Pakistan, Palestine, and Turkey. This Council has full responsibility for the project, including provision of the annual operations funds. Iran and the United Arab Emirates are in the final stages of becoming Members of the Council. Observer countries are Germany, Greece, Italy, Kuwait, Russian Federation, Sweden, UK, and the US. Libya is in the process of becoming an Observer and other countries from the region have expressed interest.

The President of the Council is Professor Herwig Schopper, former Director-General of CERN. The Council and UNESCO have invited other countries from the region to join as Members of the Council or Observers. This Council meets twice each year. Its first meeting was in January 2003. It was preceded by an Interim Council which met nine times from 1999 to 2003. See the SESAME web site for a description of decisions, resolutions and reports from these meetings.

The SESAME Directorate consists of Prof. Khaled Toukan (Acting Director-General), Prof. Aslam Baig (Scientific Director), Dr. Gaetano Vignola (Technical Director), and Dr. Hany Helal (Administrative Director). Contact information for them and a listing of others on the staff can be seen on the web site. SESAME has four Advisory Committees (Scientific, Beam Lines, Technical, and Training) that provide guidance and review of all activities. See the web site for the names of the Chairs and members of these committees.

SESAME will have as its centerpiece a synchrotron radiation source based on a gift from Germany of the 0.8 GeV BESSY I storage ring and injector system which stopped operation at the end of November 1999. With the technical support of teams from Armenia and Russia, and with funds provided by SESAME Members, Observers and UNESCO, the components of these machines were dismantled and documented in a controlled way. On June 7, 2002 a ship containing this equipment left Hamburg harbor and delivered this equipment to Jordan's seaport at Aqaba.

When the SESAME building is completed (expected at early 2006), the 0.8 GeV BESSY I injector system will be reassembled there. The storage ring will be a new 2.5 GeV compact high-performance light source. The design for this facility was initially developed by the first Technical Director of SESAME, Dr. Dieter Einfeld, together with a team of eighteen engineers and scientists from the Middle East who were working at European synchrotron radiation laboratories. The design has been finalized by his successor, Dr. Gaetano Vignola, together with a team of scientists and engineers from the region that are now on the staff of SESAME, and with advice and review by the SESAME Technical Committee chaired by Prof. Albin Wrulich of the Swiss Light Source. Detailed engineering design is now underway.

The 2.5 GeV SESAME ring will cover a broad spectral range from the infrared to the hard x-ray parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. It will have straight sections for up to 12 wiggler and undulator insertion devices as well as a similar number of beam lines from bending magnets. It is planned to have up to six of these beam lines operational when the first electron beam is stored, now expected in 2009. It is anticipated that the initial user community of several hundred scientists will grow to more than one thousand as more beam lines are developed. See the SESAME web site for a description of the first set of beam lines [http://www.sesame.org.jo/About/Beam.aspx]

SESAME will provide excellent performance for the applications now carried out at other multi-GeV rings. Specific programs planned for SESAME include structural molecular biology, molecular environmental science, surface and interface science, microelectromechanical devices, x-ray imaging, archeological microanalysis, materials characterization, and clinical medical applications. As an international scientific and technological center of excellence open to all qualified scientists from the Middle East and elsewhere, SESAME will serve as a propeller for the scientific, technical, and economic development of the region and strengthen collaboration in science. The center will be jointly operated and supported by all Members with additional support from other countries interested in promoting the peaceful development of science and technology in the Middle East.

Major benefits of the project have already been realized at workshops and schools on Accelerator Science and Technology, Materials Research, and Structural Molecular Biology. See the section on "Previous Activities" on the web site for reports on these meetings. These, and other SESAME meetings, have brought scientists and engineers from SESAME Members together with experts in synchrotron radiation sources and applications.

The Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) provided $130K for the first SESAME Users’ Meeting which was held in Jordan in October 2002. Since then there have been annual SESAME Users’ Meetings in 2003 and 2004 in Iran and Turkey respectively. The meeting in 2004 attracted more than 100 scientists from the region. The 2005 Users’ Meeting will be held in Jordan in December 2005.

Eighteen scientists and engineers from the Middle East have spent 2 years working on accelerator projects at European laboratories. Several of these have now joined the SESAME technical staff, and more are expected to do so in the future. Also, more than 15 scientists from the region have completed visits to US and European synchrotron radiation laboratories working on applications of synchrotron radiation. Support for these activities has been provided by UNESCO, SESAME Members, the US Department of Energy, ICTP (Trieste) and the International Atomic Energy Agency, as well as by many synchrotron radiation laboratories in Europe and the US.

A request will be made to the US and other governments for funds for the first beam lines. Donations of equipment for beam lines and for the storage ring components are also being solicited from the fifty synchrotron radiation laboratories now in operation around the world. Offers of equipment have already been made by synchrotron radiation laboratories at SLAC (US) and LURE (France).