SESAME facilities in ever-increasing demand

No less than 151 proposals have been submitted in response to SESAME’s third call (Call “2”) for experiments on its three beamlines that closed on 27 January, thus confirming the ever-increasing demand for use of its facilities. This time, it has been 64 proposals for experiments on its XAFS/XRF beamline that have been received, and 63 proposals for experiments on its IR beamline, as opposed to 60 and 43 proposals respectively in the second call, and 36 and 19 respectively in the first call. Added to this there have been 24 proposals for use of its MS beamline that comes into operation this year.

As in the first two calls in which there were not only proposals from the Members of SESAME but also from countries further afield (Colombia, France, Germany, Italy, Kenya, Mexico and Sweden), this time again they have not only originated from the Members of SESAME. There have again been proposals from Italy and Kenya, but also from Belgium, Malta, Qatar, South Africa and the U.K.

The large number of proposals and the variety of places from where they originate are excellent by any standards, and SESAME is greatly encouraged by the continuous upward trend in the number being received whether from users having already utilized SESAME’s facilities who are seeking to return to carry out further measurements, or new users from both the SESAME Members and beyond. In the case of the first group, this demonstrates that SESAME’s facilities are fully meeting users’ expectations, while in the second, this is evidence of the sound reputation SESAME is gaining on the world stage as a state-of-the-art synchrotron light source.

Since SESAME started hosting users on its beamlines in July 2018, 86 experiments involving 62 groups from 12 different countries have been selected for beam time following review by the international Proposal Review Committee. Most of these experiments have already been performed, and the SESAME beamline scientists are waiting for the restart of operation of the machine in March to welcome the remaining users still to perform experiments. After this, and following completion of the evaluation process, it will be the turn of the users having submitted proposals in response to the third call to use SESAME’s beamlines for their work.

The first peer-reviewed paper presenting results using data obtained at SESAME’s beamlines was published in June 2019. Since then three other peer-reviewed papers have been published and two have been accepted for publication. In addition, six papers have been submitted to journals and more than fifteen are under preparation. Moreover, part of the results presented in one PhD thesis was based on data collected at SESAME’s XAFS/XRF beamline.