His Excellency Mr Ruy Pacheco de Azevedo Amaral, Ambassador of Brazil to Jordan, visited SESAME on February 21, 2021. He was accompanied by diplomates at the Embassy, namely the Minister-Counselor Felix Baes de Faria and Counselor José Renato Ruy Ferreira.
The Ambassador and his suite were welcomed by the SESAME Director, Dr. Khaled Toukan, and members of his staff and were given a presentation on the importance of the science being carried out at SESAME and the significant role the Facility was playing in science and technology in the Middle East and neighbouring countries. While presenting SESAME as a facility designed on the model of CERN, and one that was hosting researchers and users with diverse cultural, political and religious backgrounds, Dr. Toukan highlighted the scientific papers on numerous achievements in many different fields of knowledge that had already been published in international peer-reviewed scientific journals by the users of SESAME. The Technical Director, Maher Attal, congratulated the Ambassador for the impressive work done by the Brazilian Synchrotron Light Laboratory (LNLS) that had started with the UVX 1.37 GeV storage ring and was now opening Sirius, one of the first 4th-generation light sources in the world. He expressed the hope that there may be collaboration with Sirius, particularly in the upgrading of SESAME’s machine to full energy injection.
The Ambassador and his suite were taken on a tour of the Centre during which they were shown the beamline facilities by the Scientific Director, Dr. Andrea Lausi, and informed of the many scientific applications being carried out at SESAME. “SESAME is progressing well and, despite the critical situation imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, continues to work on a number of proposals in various disciplines” he said to them.
Ambassador Amaral was highly impressed by what he saw and in his own words stated “I should like to express appreciation and gratitude to Dr. Toukan who has been involved in the project since its inception and whose unwavering commitment has been instrumental in bringing the Centre to where it is today”.
Brazil is an observer country of SESAME and at the beginning of the SESAME project trained various researchers at LNLS. Dr. Toukan expressed gratitude for this to the Brazilian Ambassador. This was the first visit to SESAME specially organized for Brazilian diplomates, though the then Ambassador of Brazil had taken part in the official opening of SESAME on 16 May 2017. Ambassador Amaral expressed great satisfaction on the fruitful collaboration there had been between LNLS and SESAME and hoped that further collaboration may be repeated in the future.