Join us on Thursday January 19, 2023 at 4 pm CET (10 EST) and ask questions to our distinguished guest ! Prof. Eliezer Rabinovici will explain how a Source of Light can shine in the Middle-East and will bring us back to the foundation of the SESAME.

Abstract

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). Current members of SESAME are  Cyprus, Egypt, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Pakistan, the Palestinian Authority, and Turkey. It is a Synchrotron Light source and it is being used by researchers to study a large variety of scientific questions. It has been constructed in Jordan and has been operating since 2018. It is also the first green light source. I will describe it's present scientific status.

From a very personal viewpoint, I will sketch how this project has come into being starting in 1995. The story will move from the CERN cafeteria,  crossing the Sinai desert to the completion of a high quality scientific light source in Jordan. Remarks on the challenges such collaborations face in the present international environment will be offered.

Biography

Professor Eliezer Rabinovici is an Israeli theoretical physicist twice President of the SESAME council.  He is professor at the Racah Institute of Physics of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Louis Michel visiting chair at the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques (IHES). He received his PhD in high-energy physics at the Weizmann Institute of Science in 1974. In the following years, he worked as a research associate at Fermilab and at Lawrence Berkeley Radiation Laboratory. Professor Rabinovici has been Chair of the Israeli Committee for SESAME since 1997 and Chair of the Israeli High-Energy Committee from 2004 to 2020. In 2004, he was appointed as one of Israel’s delegates to the CERN Council, where he served as Vice President from 2016 to 2018 and as current President.