Foreword from Director

On January 1, 2018 the Centre for Functional Surface Functionalized Glass came into life as a new organization entity in the framework of the Alexander Dubček University of Trenčín, enjoying significant amount of freedom in decision making, and extensive academic autonomy. This gives us all an excellent opportunity for further successful development, but also makes us responsible for it. We have a good start. We can build on a long tradition of glass research and education, dating back at least 30 years, and related to expertise and skills in glass preparation, characterization, and industrial collaboration. We have substantial funding from H2020 programme, excellent international collaboration with the FunGlass project partners and, hopefully, also co-funding from the Slovak government for upgrade of our research infrastructure expected to come in 2018. This gives us a great start, but in order to move on, to the level of internationally recognized player, we need more than that. We need clear realization of what is our vision, what will be our mission, and what are our values. Our vision is to upgrade from the position of a national leader in glass education, expertise and applied research, to the role of a key European player. Our mission is to promote and return value to education through high level teaming and training activities, with ultimate goal to improve quality of life of human beings around the world. Both the vison and the mission are anchored in the values, which must become inseparable part of our everyday life in the Centre. These include promotion of innovation and scientific excellence, including the culture of inquiry, and accountability for everyone’s actions. We respect the diversity, striving to create multinational and multicultural, friendly, but intelectually highly motivating environment, where every individual feels respected, and with equal gender, racial and ethnic representation at all levels of Centre organization. And finally, it is partnership and teaming, close collaboration with our academic and industrial partners, exchange of skills and ideas as prerequisite condition for further growth of the Centre.