Nicholas J. Sammut, Deputy Dean of the ICT Faculty at the University of Malta, is part of the core team that is establishing an international scientific organisation in The Balkans.
With a capital investment of around €300 million, the facility will be the largest of its kind in the region. The South-East Europe International Institute for Sustainable Technology (SEEIIST) will be based on the same model as that used to establish the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland back in the 1950s with the primary aim of using science for peace.
Dr Sammut said: "When I was only a boy, I was horrified by the obscenities of war, just a few kilometres from us, in the Balkans. Now it is a privilege to be part of the reconciliation process in the region by using science and technology for peace just as was done for Europe when CERN was born in the 1950s.
"It was always a dream of mine to establish a scientific international organisation and it gives me great satisfaction to be an integral part of this effort from inception."
The initiative has just been signed by nine Balkan member states and was presented to the scientific community in a forum last month in Trieste, Italy that was supported by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the European Physical Society (EPS), the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) and the Ministry of Science of Montenegro.
The initiative is currently considering the construction of a fourth generation synchrotron light source and a hadron cancer therapy facility as the organisation's primary focus. The light source will have extensive use in many fields, including physics, biology, chemistry, engineering, nanotechnology, archaeology and the environment. The hadron therapy machine will be used for the most advanced clinical therapy of certain cancer patients and the research of tumour therapy using ions.
A design study of each of these machines has been launched, based on cutting-edge science and technology and about 1,000 scientists and medical practitioners will eventually be involved in the design, construction and use of the facility.
Studies are currently underway to safeguard the facility's sustainability and an educational programme, supported by the IAEA, is being introduced to ensure that adequate capacity and know-how is built to maximise the facility's benefits. In addition, a layer of technology transfer and innovation is also being included to enable the technology to be used by industry.