Maher Attal, an accelerator physicist who has been acting Technical Director of SESAME since 24 September 2019, has now been confirmed in this position.
Maher has 18 years experience in accelerator physics and beam dynamics. Among his diverse experience are the design and optimization of magnetic lattices of synchrotron light source accelerators, follow up to their construction and installation, and commissioning of the SESAME accelerators and their operation. He also has good experience in coordinating the operation of SESAME’s machine and in leading accelerator projects.
Maher has been a member of SESAME’s technical team from the early beginnings of SESAME, and he has, as a result, an exhaustive knowledge of the Laboratory’s accelerators. Among his actions during the period he served as acting Technical Director were leadership in the decision on the near future plans for SESAME’s Microtron, initiation of improvements to the documentation on the performance and history of the machine, near-future and long-term plans to achieve higher beam availability, longer Mean Time Between Failure, and lower Mean Time To Repair, and better performance of the machine for the users.
His immediate challenge as Technical Director will be the refurbishment of SESAME’s microtron with, in the longer term, its replacement by a new 100 MeV LINAC.
After a BSc in physics at An-Najah National University in Palestine, Maher obtained a diploma in high energy physics at the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Italy and a PhD in accelerator physics at Paris-Sud 11 University in France. His career in accelerator physics started by an initial period at LURE/SOLEIL (France), where he worked in SOLEIL’s machine physics group, following which he joined SESAME in 2004. In 2016, he was a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of IPAC16 (International Particle Accelerator Conference) held in Busan (Republic of Korea). In 2020, he joined the scientific programme committee of the 8th Low Emittance Rings Workshop that is to be held at INFN (Instituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare) in Italy.