On 27 October 2015, the Ambassador of the United States of America to Jordan, Alice G. Wells, toured SESAME in a 45-minute visit tailor-made for her. She was accompanied by the US Embassy Regional Environment, Science, Technology, and Health Officer for the Middle East and North Africa, Elizabeth Hattingh, and by Yara Abu Laban from the Regional Environment, Science, Technology & Health Office at the Embassy.
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In September 2015, 27 physics students and teachers from Bahrain, Cyprus, Egypt, Israel, Pakistan, Palestinian Authority and Turkey took part in the 1st student and teacher school for SESAME held at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) in Geneva (Switzerland).
On 6 August 2015, the Minister of Science, Technology and Space (MOST) of Israel, Danny Ben Yosef Dannon, visited SESAME together with other high-ranking members of his Ministry, including Mr Ido Sharir, Director General of the Ministry. Eliezer Rabinovici, one of Israel’s delegates to the SESAME Council and its co-Vice President, was also a member of the delegation.
On 20 July 2015, the Royal Society announced that Professor Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith FRS, President of the SESAME Council, was one of the recipients of the 2015 very prestigious Royal Medal. He was being awarded this Medal for his major contributions to the development of the standard model of particle physics, particularly his success in making the case for building the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) at CERN.
SESAME, in collaboration with the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency), is pleased to announce short-term fellowships (2-6 months) for young scientists from the SESAME Members needing to acquire skills in well-established synchrotron light facilities.
European Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation and Director General of CERN visit SESAME
On 13 April, the European Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation, Carlos Moedas, and the Director General of CERN, Rolf Heuer, visited SESAME where they met the staff working on the construction of SESAME and saw inter alia the experimental hall and equipment already installed.
At CERN in Geneva from Friday, 27 March, members of the CERN team leading work on construction of the magnetic system for SESAME’s brand new storage ring (the heart of the facility).
All the steel structure, bar some of the purlins, was in place by 5 January 2014 – had it not been for bad weather conditions, this would have been the case earlier.
Reconstruction of the roof of SESAME’s experimental hall started on 6 December 2014, and the skeleton, consisting of the spine truss, secondary trusses, sway trusses and bracers, is now in place.
SESAME (Synchrotron Light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East, www.sesame.org.jo) is being built in Jordan under the umbrella of UNESCO as an international synchrotron radiation source.