International Exchanges During COVID-19

ICTP’s activity in developing countries has shaped the career of Laure Gouba, who researches low-dimensional quantum field theories. The 49-year-old theorist, who has worked at ICTP in Trieste for a decade, hails from Zabré, a small city in Burkina Faso. Gouba recalls a childhood affinity for math and science, and her second-place finish in a secondary-school Olympiad. In her youth, Gouba gravitated toward mathematics before switching to mathematical physics in graduate school.

But educational resources were limited: Gouba remembers spending a lot of time at home perusing textbooks to learn the material. Her early physics education did not include lab or much hands-on activity. “For certain concepts in physics, we could only [learn from] images in books,” she says. In addition, her secondary school years were marked by national instability, with a coup d’état occurring in 1983 when she was 12.

Gouba reached her current position with the help of several opportunities sponsored in part by ICTP. After graduating from university in Burkina Faso, she attended the Institut de Mathématiques et de Sciences Physiques (IMSP) in Benin, where she received PhD funding from an ICTP-affiliated organization called the Organization for Women in Science for the Developing World.

A Light Source in The Middle East

Esen Ercan Alp’s planned presentation centered on SESAME, an international synchrotron facility in Jordan, which began conducting experiments in 2017. Alp, a physicist at Argonne National Laboratory, who chairs SESAME’s science advisory committee, has been involved with the facility since it was first approved as a project in 2000. In addition to its science, one goal of the facility was to promote peace and collaboration in the region, and its eight member countries include Iran, Israel, and Pakistan.

SESAME also helps to prevent brain drain. “In all of these countries, whether Iran, Egypt, or Turkey, there is a huge hunger for access to modern facilities,” says Alp. “A lot of individuals [working in these countries] who did their thesis work elsewhere came back home, and SESAME is a light of hope for them. They can come to a modern place and meet with scientists who are really knowledgeable and work like everyone else.”

This year, SESAME received 151 applications for beam time, more than a 30 percent increase from 2019. The proposals largely come from Middle Eastern member countries, but SESAME also received proposals from far-flung locations such as Finland, Mexico, and Brazil, where it can be difficult to get beam time at facilities closer to home. “They may choose to send their proposals to us without realizing that competition is also quite high at SESAME,” says Alp.

Alp says that the day-to-day operation of SESAME is similar in many ways to the synchrotron facility at Argonne where he works. But he points out that in the US, for example, synchrotrons have operated for more than half a century. In the Middle East, the idea is brand new, making it difficult to communicate existential needs to politicians and often culminating in many rejected project ideas. “When you have an established culture in science, it’s so much easier to work,” he says. “The biggest challenge for us in the Middle East was to establish that culture. It takes sincere effort, and it is not done if you are looking for personal glory.”

Accelerator Science In Africa

Building a particle accelerator, according to Christine Darve, can jump-start technological change in a country. Such a project necessitates training people in cutting-edge science and equips them to operate the accelerators used in medical treatment. With these goals in mind, Darve, who works at the European Spallation Source (ESS), has been working for over a decade to further accelerator science in African countries.

Every two years since 2010, Darve has helped put on the African School of Fundamental Physics and Applications (ASP), a three-week summer school. At each school, more than twenty physicists from around the world teach up to 85 students, around 30 percent of whom are women. Between 2010 and 2018, the school has taken place all over the continent, including Senegal, Rwanda, and Namibia. Darve, who also teaches some of the classes, describes dedicated students of limited means, including one from Madagascar named Laza, who walked an hour each way to attend school .

The school has also served as a venue to bolster the efforts to build a synchrotron in Africa called the African Light Source. Herman Winick, a professor emeritus at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and early advocate for such a facility, discussed the project at the 2012 school in Ghana. Leaders of the African Light Source project are currently fundraising to build the synchrotron, and they are planning a virtual meeting to detail the facility’s roadmap in November.

ASP also provides an opportunity for African researchers living abroad to give back to their communities. Gouba, who attended the first ASP in South Africa as a student, worked to bring the summer school to Benin in 2022. Although Benin was not ultimately selected, she intends to contribute to the school in the future, perhaps as an instructor.

Over the last five years, Darve has also developed Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) on topics in accelerator physics targeted toward undergraduates, with over 4,500 learners enrolled today. Darve developed the MOOCs from three summer schools related to the construction and operation of the new synchrotron MAX IV and the future neutron source ESS, which will both be based in Lund, Sweden. The courses are available for free on the website Coursera, where the viewer can also pay to receive a certificate. The online course extends the reach of her curriculum, as young people across Africa can access the courses on their smartphones. “Youngsters are youngsters everywhere,” she says. “They are captivated by screens.”

An Uncertain Future

These programs provide physicists in developing countries with necessary resources for education and research. But the coronavirus pandemic has disrupted the planned programming this year. After pausing experiments in March, SESAME resumed internal operations in June and is accepting experiment proposals for three beam lines, although travel is still restricted in the Middle East. ICTP is now running virtual events. According to Darve, this year’s ASP, which was slated to take place in Marrakesh in July, has been postponed until next year. In the meantime, the program has offered online courses since May. The question remains how well virtual interactions can replace in-person meetings.