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Synchrotron Radiation News,
Draft; April 1, 2001
BESSY I TO BE SHIPPED TO JORDAN
SESAME GROUND BREAKING SET FOR SUMMER 2001
CANDIDATES IDENTIFIED FOR TECHNICAL DIRECTOR
Herman Winick
With the commitment of the government of Jordan to fund the construction
of the building to house the SESAME facility, and with the plans
for aground breaking ceremony to be held this summer at the SESAME
site in Allaan Jordan, the German government has agreed to ship
the BESSY I injector and storage ring components to Jordan. With
this agreement, the SESAME Project may be considered launched while
efforts continue to raise the remaining funds required to complete
the facility. A search committee for the SESAME Technical Director
has identified the top candidates among those who have applied for
the post and others. These are now being actively pursued.
These major milestones for the SESAME Project (to construct a wide
spectral range synchrotron radiation facility as an international
center for basic and applied research under the auspices of UNESCO)
were reached at the 5th meeting of the SESAME Interim Council (IC)
in Cairo Egypt on March 12-13, 2001 (see www.sesame.org.jo).
The agreement by the German government to transfer the BESSY I components
came in reponse to a request by the Interim Council based on the
following:
Jordan has
offered 100,000 square meters of very suitable land, along with several useful existing
buildings, at a site in Allaan Jordan about 30km from Amman and 30 km from the King
Hussein/Allenby Bridge crossing of the Jordan river.
Jordan has
agreed to provide funds for construction of the accelerator hall and will proceed immediately to finalize the design
and sign contracts for this construction.
The other 10 SESAME
member countries (Armenia, cyprus, Egypt, Greece, Iran,
Israel, Morocco, Oman, the Palestinian Authority, and Turkey) are fullfilling their obligations to provide funding
for SESAME. Based on contacts made by Jordan
with other Arab countries, it is expected that additional
countries will join the project in the near future.
At four workshops
conducted during 2000 significant progress has been made in training accelerator specialists
from the region and in developing the scientific community and scientific program for
SESAME.
In addition, more than 30 scientists and engineers from Middle East countries are, or have
been, working at European and US SR labs for periods of several weeks to one year gaining
experience in both accelerator technology and applications of synchrotron radiation.
The IC meeting was presided over by Council President Herwig Schopper
(CERN), with Vice-Presidents Khaled Toukan (Jordan) and Dinçer
?lk? (Turkey) also present, and with Siegbert Raither (UNESCO) as
Secretary.
Toukan, who is the Minister of Higher Education of Jordan, led the
Jordanian delegation to the Council and made the strong commitments
described above which resulted in the agreement by Germany to transfer
the BESSY I equipment. Toukan also said that Jordan would provide
a core staff of 3-4 people (e.g. secretary, civil engineer, administrator)
to work with the SESAME Technical Director.
Candidates for the position of SESAME Technical Director have been
identified by a search committee chaired by Gus Voss (DESY). The
top candidates are now being pursued with the expectation that the
position will be filled by the summer of 2001.
Reports were presented to the IC by its four working committees;
Technical, Scientific, Training, Finance. Voss and Galieno Denardo
(ICTP, Trieste) presented the reports of the Technical and Training
Committees respectively. These two committees worked together on
the 10 day September 2000 workshop/school on accelerator science
and technology.
Participating in this were 53 students selected from 100 applicants.
Of these 21 were selected for 6-12 months of further training at
6 European SR Labs (Daresbury, DESY, Elettra, ESRF, LURE, and MAXLAB)
with support provided by these labs. Most of these students have
already begun this training. Other labs (e.g.; ANKA and the Swiss
Light Source) have also agreed to participate in the training program.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has offered 5 grants
for 6-month fellowships for training in both accelerator technology
and applications of synchrotron radiation.
Ercan Alp (APS) and Herman Winick (SSRL) presented the report of
the SESAME Scientific Committee which conducted three workshops
in 2000; two on Structural Molecular Biology and one on Materials
Research. These workshops brought scientists from SESAME member
countries together with experts from outside the region to develop
the SESAME scientific program, with particular emphasis on the beam
lines, user-support facilities, and user-support staff. At these
workshops scientists from SESAME member countries met each other,
often for the first time, and found common interests which led to
them forming collaborations with each other and also with scientists
from outside the region. Reports on these workshops are posted on
the SESAME web site (www.sesame.org.jo).
Two activities by the SESAME Scientific Committee are in the planning
stage:
A workshop/school on Bioinformatics
and Structural Modelling will be held at
Sabanci University in Istanbul on September 3-9, 2000.
program is being planned by Zehra Sayers (Sabinci
University), together with Irit Sagi (Weizmann Institute, Israel) and Metaxia Vlassi Demokritos, Greece) with financial support
from UNESCO and Sabanci Up to 25 students will be accepted. The first announcement
of this workshop/school is posted on the SESAME
web site. Those interested should contact
Zehra Sayers at zehra@sabanci.edu.tr.
A workshop/school on
the use of IR in biomedical and materials applications will be held somewhere in the
Middle East/Mediterranean region within the next 12 months. This school will offer hands-on training with commercial Fourier-Transform
Infra-Red (FTIR) Spectrometers with an integrated IR source. Those interested in participating should contact
Lisa Miller (NSLS) at lmiller@bnl.gov.
ogy
and applications of synchrotron radiation."mso-spacerun: yes"
In addition, more than 30 scientists and engineers from Middle
East countries are, or have\par been, working at European and
US SR labs for periods of several weeks to one year
gaining\par experience in both accelerator technology and
applications of synchrotron radiation.
Winick also reported on the status of the US Cooperative Research
Program, funded largely by the Department of Energy. Eight scientists
from Middle East countries have been or are now being supported
in visits to US synchrotron radiation labs (ALS, APS, CAMD, NSLS,
SSRL, SURF).
Three of these were for
visits of several weeks to a few months and five are now
completing one year visits.
The IC also heard a technical presentation by Anahid Dian Yeremian
(SLAC) on a design for CANDLE (Center for the Advancement of Natural
Discoveries using Light emission), an intermediate-energy third
generation light source that is proposed as an international project
in Armenia. The basic parameters are: E=2.9 GeV, I=350 mA, Circumference=216
m, No. of straight sections = 16 (with 13 available for insertion
devices), emittance = 6-16 nm-radians. The Armenian group, led by
Jirair Hovnanian, proposes a regional synchrotron radiation network
linking SESAME in Jordan with the Armenian project.
The Cairo IC meetig was organized by the UNESCO Cairo Office (Mohamed
El-Deek, Director) with support from Then Egyptian National Commission
for UNESCO and The Egyptian National Centre for Radiation Research
and Technology (NCRRT).
Meeting participants were treated to some of Egypt's unique offerings:
a Sound and Light Performance at the Pyramids in Giza hosted by
the Egyptian Ministry of Culture and a dinner/cruise on the Nile
hosted by the Egyptian Atomic Energy Establishment.
The next meeting of the SESAME IC is scheduled for August 27-28,
2001 in Amman Jordan.
Herman Winick
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Host Institute
