Over the past four decades, glasses, glass-ceramics and composites have contributed to achieving the most advanced socio-economic breakthroughs steadily as advanced high-tech materials. To highlight the importance of glass, 2022 has been declared International Year of Glass by the United Nations. To compete with emerging economies like China and India, the European glass sector is challenged to seek product leadership by investing more in research and innovation in order to develop new materials and to train specialists for a competitive but promising market. Contributing to this challenge is the main aim of this project “Structured functional glasses for lasing, sensing and health applications” (FunctiGlass), a unique interdisciplinary double-degree research and training program. It aims at impacting advanced high-tech materials for three sectors: Light sources, Sensors and Bio-applications. FunctiGlass program will fully train 11 Doctoral Candidates (DCs) who will participate in a joint research training program built on very strong academia/industry cooperation. It guarantees the exposure of Researchers to 11 academic (universities and research institutes) and 9 non-academic environments (industry and SMEs) representing 9 different countries. Each DC will be supervised by two academic tutors and one mentor (industrial partner) to guarantee inter-sectorial knowledge sharing and acquisition of transferable skills with emphasis on entrepreneurship and innovation. With the multi-dimensional training of FunctiGlass program, the 11 DCs will excel in the future economy by acquiring a multi-faceted perspective and a growing mindset to become the future leaders in glass science and especially in nano/micro-structured glass-based materials. With this program, the DCs will find their own future innovative path in academia or industry. This program will create the grounds for establishing long-term relations between the academic and private sectors for technology and compete

AIM: Communities for Sciences (C4S) will be developed in 9 European cities (Milan -Italy-, Brussels -Belgium-, Manresa -Spain-, Vic – Spain-, Vienna -Austria-, Budapest -Hungary-, Sofia -Bulgaria-, Lund -Sweden- and Berlin -Germany) and their areas of influence. The activities that will be implemented will be coordinated by a local Hub in 6 cities with the leadership of one of these local partners of the Consortium. Each Hub will focus on a specific vulnerable community (immigrants, Roma community and disabled citizens) working with and for children and youth aged from 0-16 years old and their families. C4S will study the relationships between science and society by focusing upon vulnerable communities due to the fact that they are often not visible as active social agents. It is necessary not only to create activities for them, but also to include them as co-participants of these activities in order to ensure a more coherent approach towards inclusive education and to promote anticipatory policy-making. This will be done through science education activities, through formal and non-formal educational institutions, from an inclusive standpoint, to provide them with better science awareness and capacities and to make them progressively aware of exclusionary practices that at times may occur in science. Special emphasis will be put on engaging them in an intersectional approach to fight against the gender discrimination suffered by women and girls on multiple levels. In addition to this, each HUB will engage with policy-makers, educators and institutional representatives to promote their role in supporting and promoting an inclusive science education approach and to consolidate such inclusive practices on more solid grounds.