During a visit he paid to SESAME on 11 April, the Ambassador of
Iran to Jordan, Mojtaba Ferdosipour, indicated his country’s intention to intensify further its cooperation with SESAME, a position very much welcomed by SESAME.
Iran is one of the 9 Members of SESAME.
Iranian scientists and engineers have always played an active part in the Centre’s activity. For a number of years, two of its engineers, Arash Kaftoosian and Seadat Varnasseri, headed SESAME’s Radio Frequency Group (in the case of Arash), and its Power Supply and Diagnostics Group (in the case of Seadat). Since August 2015, Hossein Ali Khosroabadi has been working as SESAME’s Beamline Optics Scientist. For 7 months, Iran seconded Ehsan Yousefi to CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) to help in construction of the magnetic system for SESAME’s storage ring - construction of the magnets has been funded by the European Commission and led by CERN, in collaboration with SESAME.
An Iranian, Fatemeh Elmi of the University of Mazandaran, was one of the first scientists to use the Fourier Transform Infrared microscope installed at SESAME in the summer of 2014 to jump-start research – this microscope will soon be adapted to SESAME’s ‘day-one’ IR (infrared) beamline. Fatemeh is working on a joint study on breast cancer.
Ambassador Mojtaba Ferdosipou was accompanied on his visit by Abdullah Nejad, Counsellor (Head of Economic Affairs) at the Embassy of Iran. During his tour of the Centre, he was shown inter alia the 800 MeV booster synchrotron commissioned in September 2014, which is the highest energy accelerator in the Middle East, the first 12 of the 16 cells that form the new storage ring that were installed and aligned at SESAME in mid-April, and the IR laboratory where the Fourier Transform Infrared microscope is installed.