My main areas of focus are biomedicine and bioarcheology. In collaboration with researchers from Jordan, we have conducted studies that have proved t… - Gihan Kamel

SESAME is considered as a gate for all the female scientists in the Middle East and neighbouring regions, especially to those who are not able to travel abroad, facilitating their struggles and helping them in having an advanced scientific career.

The first one is about training – we go into that in two parallel ways, either we bring experts from other synchrotrons to train people at SESAME (or we) send SESAME staff to other synchrotrons to get special experience in a specific field. Also (we) arrange for training fellowships for any researcher from SESAME members to go abroad to a synchrotron to get trained and we recently opened a training fellowship for two months in any European synchrotron. The second point the brain drain issue. We (Middle Eastern scientists) are all going abroad to have our PhDs or post-docs or even research positions abroad and many, many of us don’t come back because we don’t have these facilities. So we keep just flowing out of the region and this is why we see SESAME as a key for a brain drain reverse because it’s bringing us back.’

We are scientists but we are still humans and we cannot close our eyes or ears to what’s happening around us.