New Year, New Colloquium Series

ICTP's 2012 activities got off to an impressive start with two engrossing talks by Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith, Director of Energy Research, Oxford University and President, SESAME Council (SESAME is the synchrotron facility being built in Jordan and is the Middle East's first major international research centre). Smith was also the Director General of CERN from 1994 to 1998 when the LHC was approved and commissioned

The talks were part of ICTP's Colloquium Series, and Llewellyn Smith's first talk focussed on the benefits, challenges and opportunities of international scientific collaboration. His talking points were drawn from an article he published in the Academic Executive Brief, vol. 1, 2011.

Llewellyn Smith drew attention to the emerging scientific powers, the changing landscape of scientific collaborations and the benefits of globalization of science. He also introduced the audience to the history of SESAME and the challenges that lie ahead in ensuring that the facility is up and running by 2019. He pointed out that even in these early days SESAME is contributing toward capacity building and training in the Middle East.

Llewellyn Smith's second talk, titled "Future World Energy Demand and Supply", looked at the critical challenges facing the global population: that of providing sufficient food, water, and energy to allow everyone on the planet to live decent lives, in the face of rising population, the threat of climate change, and declining fossil fuels. He stressed that there is no single solution to global problems such as increasing energy demands and decreasing supply, but the global community needs to look at implementing several steps to address the challenges.

The complete video-recordings of his talks will soon be available on ICTP's iTunes channel.