TAIEX and ASREN to Support SESAME Users in Jordan

AMMAN – Under the Patronage of HE Dr. Khaled Toukan, Director of SESAME and Chairman of the Jordan Atomic Energy Commission (JAEC), and the Support and funding of the Technical Assistance and Sponsors Information Exchange Instrument of the European Commission (TAIEX),  and in cooperation with the SESAME Jordanian National Committee (SJNC), the Arab States Research and Education Network (ASREN) and the Synchrotron-light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East (SESAME) have successfully conducted a workshop for the Jordanian SESAME users in Amman.

The main objective was to promote SESMAE and the valuable opportunities of European Synchrotron Sources to the Jordanian Users communities. More than 100 active scientists and researchers from various Jordanian universities and research organizations attended this workshop. Participants showed great interest in utilizing SESAME and highlighted the essentiality of having ASREN and GEANT connectivity as a research-enabling tool.

The scientific program of the workshop covered topics in current states of SESAME Synchrotron, SESAME Computational Facilities and Links and Research opportunities and applications using the XAFS/XRF Beamline, IR Beamline and MS Beamline, in addition to research infrastructures and capacity building opportunities.

In the opening session, HE Dr. Khaled Toukan welcomed the attendees and encouraged them to focus on the workshop sessions to develop their scientific research activities as this is a unique opportunity to learn from each other and exchange experience with the European users participating in the workshop.

Dr. Abdul-Halim Wriekat, Chairman of the Jordanian National Committees for SESAME introduced the scientific aspects of this workshop, highlighted SESAME Synchrotrons, research opportunities and applications using the beamlines namely: XAFS/XRF, IR and the Material Science (MS).

Mr. Yousef Torman, Director of the Pan Arab Research and Education Network (ASREN) raised the awareness on the importance and necessity for establishing research and education networks at both national and regional levels to better enable collaboration between researchers and to facilitate sharing resources and access to data repositories and research communities.

Several presentations were conducted by the guest speakers and Synchrotron experts from Europe on the use of the beamlines. Technical developments and success stories, emphasizing the importance of the computational sciences and other research domains were presented and discussed by the Jordanian SESAME users.