SESAME holds its second user's meeting

The Second SESAME User's Meeting was held at Isfahan University of Technology in the beautiful and historical surroundings of the city of Isfahan in Iran, during the period from 29 November to 1 December 2003. Some 70 participants came from a number of member and observer countries including Brazil, Federal Republic of Germany, Iran, Japan, Jordan, Pakistan, Palestinian Authority, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States and Yemen.

The meeting was opened with a talk by Herwig Schopper, President of the SESAME Council, who briefed the audience on the history and current status of SESAME. Dieter Einfeld gave a detailed account of the 2.5 GeV lattice design and showed the performance of a number of possible insertion devices. A very high proportion of the machine circumference is now devoted to insertion devices. Herman Winick talked about the growth of synchrotron radiation sources in the world. Samar Hasnain presented the plan for the first phase of SESAME beamlines. Details of six phase-1 beamlines were given so that working groups could provide feedback. The plan includes building beamlines which meet the requirements of a wide range of scientific activities from archaeometry to biology and chemistry. Reza Mansouri, Chairman of the SESAME Training Committee, described a `roadmap' for SESAME capacity building in the region for the 2004–2007 period. There were additional talks covering a range of applications, including Soichi Wakatsuki (Japan) and Joel Sussmann (Israel) on structural biology, Manolis Pantos (UK) on archaeology and cultural heritage, Nasser Hamdan (UAE) on surfaces and interfaces, Shoaib Ahmad (Pakistan) on photoemission and photoabsorption spectroscopy, Aldo Craievich (Brazil) on SAXS of nanostructured materials, and Pierre Rizkallah (UK) on the use of synchrotron radiation by the pharmaceutical industry.

On the last day of the meeting and on the basis of the discussions and lectures presented during the previous days, four different working groups were formed to discuss the detailed plan for the six phase-1 beamlines, dedicated to (i) small-angle-resolved X-ray scattering (SAXS)/wide-angle-resolved X-ray scattering (WAXS); (ii) MAD protein crystallography; (iii) photoelectron and photoabsorption spectroscopy; (iv) X-ray absorption fine structure (XAFS)/X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy (XRF); (v) powder diffraction also with X-ray fluorescence capabilities; and (vi) infrared spectromicroscopy.