This year (in) December (will be) our 15th users’ meeting. In the beginning, it was difficult to understand our needs as researchers from one region … - Gihan Kamel

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This year (in) December (will be) our 15th users’ meeting. In the beginning, it was difficult to understand our needs as researchers from one region because of the differences between our countries. Later on, and one users’ meeting after another, it became clear that we have common needs and common requirements, so we are trying to explore as much as we can. So, for me and the beamline, I don’t want always to focus on biomedicine. It’s true that we have common diseases in the Middle East, common biomedical and environmental issues. But also the Middle East is very rich when it comes to archaeology and cultural heritage, and, people come together and when they need to they talk to each other and they find common ways to collaborate. So, for example, this researcher from Cyprus working on ancient human remains, these remains were collected from east Iran. We have to invest in these common links between our researchers. I think an establishment of a synchrotron facility in the Middle East is now becoming maybe the only way to bring people together.’