e-AGE2012, December 2012, Dubai Robert Klapisch 1 NREN alliances in Africa and Arab States Tools to fight Knowledge Divide

e-AGE2012, December 2012, Dubai Robert Klapisch 2 Alliances of National Research and Education Networks The main goal of these alliances should be to better pool resources in order to make an impact on the progress of World Science. The three heads of these alliances, seated at the same table during our Malta conference represent the University system serving 1 billion people. Ubuntunet connects several Southern-Eastern African RENs among themselves and is connected to GEANT since 2008 This link is now enhanced by Africa Connect WACREN is an alliance between West and Central Africa that was structured in 2011 ASREN set up by the League of Arab States is the most recent and is incorporated as a non-profit in Germany.

e-AGE2012, December 2012, Dubai Robert Klapisch 3 Morocco and the ATLAS LHC collaboration Moroccan Universities (RUPHE) started belonging to ATLAS in 1996 long before ASREN existed scientists (1000 students) from 174 universities in 38 countries

e-AGE2012, December 2012, Dubai Robert Klapisch 4 The ATLAS Detector CERN has given Morocco 160 CPU servers, half of which will allow the computer center of CNRST in Rabat to qualify to a Tier 2 node of the LHC Grid the other half going to the Universities participating in RUPHE consortium.

e-AGE2012, December 2012, Dubai Robert Klapisch 5 Discovery (5 sigma confidence level) of a particle with a mass of 126 GeV.Is it the Higgs Boson? Decay into electrons (+ and -) and muons (+ and -) Decay into two photons By February 2013, there should be adequate statistics in each decay channel to decide!

e-AGE2012, December 2012, Dubai Robert Klapisch 6 An International Center in Jordan:SESAME is the most ambitious project in the Arab world SESAME is a third generation light-source under construction near Amman under the aegis of UNESCO. It is the first regional Center built with the same rules as CERN. Purpose: - to foster science and technology in the Middle East(and prevent or reverse the brain drain). - from biology and medical sciences through materials science and physics to archeology - endorsed by IUPAP, IUBMB, 45 Nobel Laureates - mutually fruitful regional international collaboration in science. Members: Bahrain, Cyprus, Egypt, Israel, Iran, Jordan, Pakistan, Palestinian Authority, Turkey Observers: France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Russian Federation, Sweden, Switzeland, UK, US

e-AGE2012, December 2012, Dubai Robert Klapisch 7 Synchrotron Light sources There are 60 SLS in the world. None in the region 1997 a donation of BESSY in Berlin results in a new international organisation modelled after CERN under UNESCO umbrella 2002 Decision to upgrade it to 2.2 GeV to make it 3rd generation competitive 2008 Building (donated by Jordan) is completed First experiments to start, provided funding (110 Millions) is completed.

e-AGE2012, December 2012, Dubai Robert Klapisch 8 Highlights An engineering group coming from several Member States is building the machine Scientific program covers: Infrared spectroscopy, ultraviolet, soft XRays, protein cristallography, X ray absorption and fluorescence, Powder Diffraction etc.. A user group is meeting regularly to prepare experiments.

e-AGE2012, December 2012, Dubai Robert Klapisch 9 Structure of Funding So far, 55M$ out of the total 110M$ has been achieved From Jordan (land, building, cash) and EU (3.2 M€) Donated equipment (Germany, UK,France, Switzerland,SLAC, Berkeley, Elettra, ESRF) Members (operational expenses, personnel) Training programmme (3M$ supplied by donors) Capital spending needed to 2014: 34.8M$ (Storage ring, beam lines, computing, ancillary building 5 Member States have agreed to provide each 5M$. EU has already agreed 4M$ EU will provide 5M$ through CERN funding for construction of main ring Others: US, FP7, Foundations etc.. Operational Expenses 2011to 2014 of M$ to be provided by Members

e-AGE2012, December 2012, Dubai Robert Klapisch 10 Very Long Baseline Interferometry sets a key role for South Africa in Radioastronomy By artificially increasing the aperture of a telescope one dramatically increases resolution. The correlation is done offline. High res image shows Hydrogen 21 cm in a Galaxy.

e-AGE2012, December 2012, Dubai Robert Klapisch 11 Can it be done in real time ? The data rate of a radiotelescope is of the order of 1-10 Gbs The first point to point communication at 2Gb/between UbuntuNet and GEANT using Africa Connect optical fibre has connected the Hart Rao Radiotelescope to JIVE (Joint Institute forVLBI in the Netherlands) over a km baseline.This allows processing and correlation in real time and opens up a whole new field of research

e-AGE2012, December 2012, Dubai Robert Klapisch 12 The Square Kilometer Array (SKA) SKA is a complex of some meter dishes to be located in Australia and on the Karoo plateau in South Africa. It will be so sensitive that it could detect an airport radar located at 50 light years. The cost is estimated at 1.5 billion $ It will need a computing power of about 1 million PCs Construction should start in 2016 and full scientific production in 2024 Several countries in Southern will reap industrial and scientific benefits

e-AGE2012, December 2012, Dubai Robert Klapisch 13 THANK YOU