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The Synchrotron-Light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East (SESAME) is an independent laboratory formally created under the auspices of UNESCO on 30 May 2002. It is located in Allan, by the Al-Balqa nahia of the Balqa governorate of Jordan.
The founding members of SESAME are Bahrain, Cyprus, Egypt, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Pakistan, the Palestinian Authority, and Turkey. The project was launched in 1999 and the ground breaking ceremony was held on 6 January 2003. Construction work began the following July, with a scheduled completion date of 2015. However financial and technical infrastructural obstacles could force the project to be delayed. The project will be inaugurated on 16 May 2017 under the patronage of King Abdullah II.
President of the SESAME Council is Christopher Llewellyn Smith, the Chair of the ITER Council and a former Director-General of CERN. The first president of SESAME council was Herwig Schopper, the former CERN director general.
Background
The original plan for SESAME was to re-use the former facility BESSY I, which was previously decommissioned in Germany. However, over the year the progress made in synchrotron radiation sources, convinced scientists that a new concept was to be developed. The present plan is to build a 2.5 GeV storage ring.
Dr. Masoud Alimohammadi and Dr. Magid Shahriari, two Iranian members of SESAME, were killed in two different terrorist attacks, for which an Iranian prosecutor accuses the Israeli Mossad in 2010.
In an interview published in 2009, physicist Herman Winick noted the name SESAME was coined to refer to door opener, the spice (which is often associated with the Middle East), and the children's television show, and the meaning Synchrotron-Light for Experimental Science Applications in the Middle East formulated to match the acronym. The participating countries unanimously decided that operations for SESAME will be located in Jordan.