EU Commissioner Carlos Moedas visits SESAME

The European Commissioner for research, science and innovation, Carlos Moedas, visited the SESAME laboratory in Jordan on Monday 13 April. When it begins operation in 2016, SESAME, a synchrotron light source, will be the Middle East’s first major international science centre, carrying out experiments ranging from the physical sciences to environmental science and archaeology.

 

CERN Director-General Rolf Heuer (left) and European Commissioner Carlos Moedas with the model SESAME magnet. © European Union, 2015.

 

Commissioner Moedas was accompanied by a European Commission delegation led by Robert-Jan Smits, Director-General of DG Research and Innovation, as well as Rolf Heuer, CERN Director-General, Jean-Pierre Koutchouk, coordinator of the CERN-EC Support for SESAME Magnets (CESSAMag) project and Princess Sumaya bint El Hassan of Jordan, a leading advocate of science in the region. They toured the SESAME facility together with SESAME Director, Khaled Toukan and SESAME’s President of Council, Chris Llewellyn-Smith, a former CERN Director-General.

Commissioner Moedas’ trip to Jordan follows his visit earlier this year to CERN, where he toured the workshop currently developing SESAME’s main storage ring magnets. CERN scientists have been working together with SESAME to develop these magnets and their powering scheme, under the CESSAMag project.

The visit concluded with the symbolic presentation by Rolf Heuer and Carlos Moedas of a model SESAME magnet to Khaled Toukan and Chris Llewellyn-Smith. 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 project.


For more information about CERN, SESAME and the CESSAMag project, read Horizon magazine's recent interview with Jean-Pierre Koutchouk: "Middle East particle accelerator shows positive power of science".

by CERN Bulletin