The Project

SESAME stands as a testament to collaborative scientific endeavours and science diplomacy in the region. In times of political uncertainties resilience and pathways to long term sustainability are needed more than ever. A comprehensive strategy to further elevate the profile of SESAME and to promote high-level outreach and advocacy is outlined in this work package. WP2 will:

- Strengthen communication and outreach capabilities at SESAME
- Keep current Members involved at SESAME and convince new Members to join, thereby solidifying long-term
sustainability
- Provide funding agencies, decision-makers and RI managers of SESAME a better understanding of the socioeconomic value and impact assessment of the facility
- Generate increased visibility to SESAME’s scientists and science in international communities and contexts.

The work package will be led by PSI with co-leaders DESY and SESAME. The work of each task is described below with the leading institution shown in parenthesis.

SUNSTONE work package 3 “SESAME as a Training Centre”, focuses on training and education to ensure long-term impact. It aims to support SESAME’s user community by developing and enlarging it, leveraging research communities in Africa, integrating scientists from the Middle East and Africa, and building a sustainable international community. The objectives of this work package are as follows:

-          Develop and enlarge the user community using SESAME;

-          Leverage the potential of African research communities;

-          Train and integrate scientists from the Middle East and African regions;

-          Build a sustainable community from Middle East and African institutions and blue prints for scientific outreach to the international community;

To achieve this goal, a yearly training path has been designed to educate users on the various aspects of synchrotron experiments, from the techniques available at the SESAME synchrotron to publication, sample preparation, experiments, data processing, and data analysis. We plan to offer one training path per year to reach a large community during this 3-year project.

Each training path will consist of three parts:

1. Online lectures, introducing synchrotron radiation, the techniques available at SESAME, and key research themes (Life Science, in Operando Conditions, Cultural Heritage, Environmental Science). These general lectures will be open to a broad community.
2. Hands-on workshops for 3 groups of 6 participants (18 participants) who will be invited to travel to SESAME synchrotron in order to conduct pre-designed experiments on the beamlines. These small groups will be accompanied by the beamline scientists and 2 expert tutors.
3. High-level one-to-one twinning sessions promoting the realisation of a real proposal (6 participants) in collaboration with an external organisation (industries, museums, hospitals, etc.).

Depending on the needs observed during the course of this project, additional lectures, tutorials, and/or meetings might be held online to address these needs and offer tailored solutions to the user community.

In the SUNSTONE project, WP4 will support SESAME in developing its user services in four outstanding ways to provide an exceptional service experience to its scientific community:

1. The User Office and user portal information systems will be enhanced by increasing the reliability and sustainability of the User Office platform, by updating the user offer system and by providing a friendlier user portal to the scientific users, drawing upon the re-use of the ELETTRA synchrotron user administration software systems already in place at SESAME and partly supported by OPEN SESAME. 

2. A reliable remote access to the SESAME beamlines will be established facilitating access for all user communities, in particular, those located further away and those with fewer travel resources.

3. The user services at beamline level will be reinforced with additional resources (two experienced postdocs) who will provide advice on experiment design, hands-on training, data treatment and data analysis support to beamline users in the SESAME strategic areas of infra-red spectromicroscopy, and soft X-ray spectroscopy. Job offers are published and the deadline for applications is September 15, 2024 (more info available here).

4. A set of two project grants will be carried out between SESAME and its user communities as user-led capacities development for SESAME. Aiming at building collaborations with impactful outcomes for SESAME, this will take the form of an open call for modest bursaries for user teams to develop e.g. a sample environment, a specific computational workflow or to test a new X-ray technique in collaboration with SESAME scientists.

The work package is co-led by ALBA-CELLS and ELETTRA.