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SESAME Officially Opens In Middle East
Courtesy of SESAMEJordanian Prince Ghazi bin Mohammad (left) watches as Koichiro Matsura (right), Director-General of UNESCO, cuts the ribbon signifying the launch of the SESAME facility. Standing between them is the Director of SESAME, Khaled Toukan.
SESAME, a synchrotron radiation laboratory in the Middle East, opened with an inauguration ceremony Nov. 3, attended by Prince Ghazi bin Mohammad of Jordan (left) and Koichiro Matsura, director-general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) (right).
Located in Allan, Jordan, SESAME is a UNESCO-sponsored project that promotes scientific development as well as understanding and cooperation among scientists from different countries in the Middle East. The November ceremony marked the completion of the main building for SESAME and scientific operations are expected to begin in 2011.
The project will offer facilities for interdisciplinary scientific collaboration and promote basic and applied research in the Middle East. Herman Winnick, a long-time APS member who currently serves on the APS Committee on International Scientific Affairs, was among the people who proposed SESAME and has been instrumental in promoting it.
Courtesy of SESAMEMr. Salameh Al-Hyari, Mayor of As-Salt City, Jordan, the largest city near the SESAME site, and Herman Winick of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Stanford University, are standing by the BESSY I 0.8 GeV booster synchrotron which arrived in parts from Germany to be assembled at the SESAME facility.
