We are scientists but we are still humans and we cannot close our eyes or ears to what’s happening around us but somehow we just decided to put these… - Gihan Kamel

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

Experiments that have been conducted there (are) biomedicine – I have an experiment with a user from Pakistan and she worked on using infrared microspectroscopy to distinguish between benign and malignant breast cancer tissues. I had an experiment with another user from Cyprus - she is an archaeologist - doing experiments on ancient human remains dating back to 4 000 years old. Another experiment is with a Jordanian user – she’s analysing historical fragments from Petra. I also have a collaboration with an Egyptian user on characterisation of historical manuscripts and another experiment with an Iranian user also working on historical parchments from the Koran and the Torah.

Basically, it is considered something like a super-microscope. The basic principle of the synchrotron is to accelerate electrons up to high energy, then we collect a part of the electromagnetic radiation (as) infrared and X-rays. You can perform different experiments or applications that almost are impossible to perform by conventional X-ray or infrared sources because the synchrotron radiation has unique properties – essentially its brightness and resolution. So we can see with the synchrotron what we can never see with any conventional source.

Yes, because we always say that SESAME was modelled on CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) (which succeeds) despite the conflicts in the past between the European countries. We take it as a role model. The war in Europe is over, but for us it’s not, so we have lots of challenges to keep going this way. We have to keep in mind all the struggling in our region parallel to constructing a facility like this.