GENEVA, SWITZERLAND, 28 September 2021 — The 7th General Assembly meeting of the SEEIIST Association (Association for the Support of the South East European International Institute for Sustainable Technologies) took place online on 28 September 2021.
The main topic of the meeting was the election of the new Chair of the Board of the SEEIIST Association, for which two candidates were nominated. Prof. Dr. Adnan Beganovic, Head of the Diagnostic Radiology and Nuclear Medicine Physics Unit at the Clinical Center of Sarajevo University, obtained the absolute majority of the voting and was formally elected Chair of the Board of the SEEIIST Association with two years term of office. He succeeds Ms. Tea Darka Glažar, who has successfully lead the Board in the last months and is going to continue her work as vice chair supporting Professor Beganovic.
Professor Beganovic is a prominent medical physicist with a strong record of excellent results in the field of medical physics, radiology and nuclear medicine. His dual role as the Head of the Diagnostic Radiology and Nuclear Medicine Physics Unit at the Clinical Centre and as the Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Science of the University of Sarajevo could bring a lot to the SEEIIST Project in terms of building a local User community and to strengthen the medical field which is the central part of SEEIIST. Professor Beganovic has extended experience in international projects related to Radiology, Medical Physics, Diagnostic Radiology, Quality and Safety in Diagnostic Radiology. He has years of experience in collaboration with the IAEA and a valuable network of people from the SEE region. Together with his team and students, Prof. Beganovic is directly involved in project activities in collaboration with CERN, DKFZ, GSI and the Jozef Stefan Institute related to the development of SEEIIST. Indeed, his team and students, based on the help of these prominent institutions, are developing an ion source and the first part of the SEEIIST accelerator in our region funded by a private donor.
Professor Adnan Beganovic expressed his pleasure to be elected as the new Chair of the Board, acknowledging the great experience of his predessesor, Ms. Tea Glazar. He also expressed his satisfaction that he will continue to work with Ms. Tea Glazar as Vice Chair.
About the SEEIIST Association
The new SEEIIST Research Infrastructure has acquired a legal status by creating the ‘Association for the support of the SEEIIST’ under Swiss law in August 2019 as a temporary solution to manage the presently ongoing Design Phase. The Association is currently the main operative body of the SEEIIST and is based in Geneva, Switzerland. The Association is a non-profit organization that pursues goals of public interest. The creation of the Association was marked by the signature of the Minutes of the Constitutive Assembly of the Association when the Statute was adopted.
According to the Statute, the governance and management structure of the SEEIIST Association consists of the General Assembly, the Board, the Executive Board and the CEO.
The EC strongly supports the project and has committed the first direct financial support of about EUR 1.5 million for the first stage of the SEEIIST design phase. The continuation of the Design Phase was assured through the EU H2020-INFRAIA-02-2020 HITRIplus project (hitriplus.eu) with the amount of EUR 5 million with the SEEIIST Association as a Beneficiary partner. Indeed, it was SEEIIST that launched HITRIplus, a new international collaboration dedicated to Heavy Ion Therapy. It gathers 22 participants from 14 European countries, which include the SEEIIST Association and five other partners from the SEE region. The SEEIIST Association participates in another EU project, I.FAST (H2020 INFRAINNOV-04-2020) as the Third party, as well as in the IAEA RER6039 project entitled ‘Developing Human Resources for Setting Up an Ion Beam Therapy Centre within the Joint South East European International Institute for Sustainable Technologies’, supported by the Technical Cooperation with EUR 0.5 million for the purpose of Capacity building.
