Rolf Heuer visited the SESAME laboratory in Jordan on 13 April along with European Commissioner for research, Carlos Moedas

CERN Director-General Rolf Heuer visited the SESAME laboratory in Jordan on Monday 13 April along with European Commissioner for research, Carlos Moedas. CERN and the European Union are working together to provide magnets for the main ring of what will be the Middle East’s first major international science centre. When it begins operation in 2016, SESAME, a synchrotron light source, will be the first laboratory of its kind in the region, carrying out experiments ranging from life sciences to environmental science and archaeology.

The SESAME visit followed a half-day conference on science diplomacy in the Jordanian capital Amman, and concluded with the symbolic presentation by Professor Heuer and Mr Moedas of a model SESAME magnet to SESAME Director, Professor Khaled Toukan. The model will remain at SESAME until the real thing, currently under test at CERN, can replace it, at which point the model will return to CERN as a reminder of the organization’s contribution to this important regional project.

SESAME’s members are currently Bahrain, Cyprus, Egypt, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Pakistan, the Palestinian Authority and Turkey. Observers at the SESAME Council are Brazil, China, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Portugal, the Russian Federation, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America. Mr Moedas took the opportunity of his visit to the laboratory to sign the letter that will formally ratify the acceptance of the European Union as a new Observer.

Through capacity building programmes in collaboration with established light source laboratories, the potential user community in SESAME’s members has steadily grown to over 300 people today, all eagerly awaiting first light in 2016. In the words of SESAME’s President of Council, Chris Llewellyn-Smith, a former CERN Director General, “SESAME is being driven from the ground up by people ready to reach across borders in order to carry out excellent science.”

CERN’s contribution to SESAME under project leader Jean-Pierre Koutchouk, comes in the form of the EU-funded CESSAMag project, through which CERN is coordinating the production of dipole, quadrupole and sextupole magnets for the SESAME main ring, along with the associated power supplies. These are being produced in SESAME members Cyprus, Israel and Turkey as well as in France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland and the UK, with in-kind support from SESAME members Iran, Pakistan and Turkey. A first complete sector is currently under test at CERN, and scheduled to be delivered to SESAME later in the year. Commissioning is due to begin in the second half of 2016.