SESAME: A Bright Hope for the Middle East

Speakers: Sir Christopher Llewellyn-Smith (University of Oxford, President, SESAME Council and Former Director-General CERN) and Professor Eliezer Rabinovici (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem).

SESAME is a cooperative venture by scientists and governments of the Middle East set up on the model of CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research). It is being developed under the auspices of UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization).

Members of SESAME are Bahrain, Cyprus, Egypt, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Pakistan, the Palestinian Authority, and Turkey.

Current Observers are Brazil, China, the European Union, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Portugal, Russian Federation, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America.

The synchrotron, which acts in effect like a giant microscope, will be used by researchers to study everything from viruses to new drugs to novel materials.

Synchrotrons have become an indispensable tool for modern science with some 60 in use around the world, almost all of them in developed countries, and this will be the first in the Middle East.

The goal of fostering advanced research in the region - and opening a new path of dialogue - was first suggested back in the 1990s. Just as CERN was set up after World War Two to bring together scientists from former adversaries in Europe, Sesame is meant to allow researchers to collaborate across the Middle East.

The governing council of Sesame is headed by a British physicist, Prof Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith, a former director of CERN, which operates the Large Hadron Collider from Geneva in Switzerland.

"It is pretty remarkable but it's happened and it's because the scientific communities in these countries have pushed for this and ignored the political barriers.

"Science is a common language - if we can speak it together, possibly we can build bridges of trust which will help in other areas."

Sesame stands for Synchrotron-light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East. And it is also a reference to the famous phrase "open sesame", the secret command to open a treasure trove in the tale of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.

There will be opportunities for questions and refreshments will be served afterwards.