Glass scientist Dušan Galusek wins the ESET Science Award

Professor Dušan Galusek has been named Outstanding Scientist in Slovakia at the eighth ESET Science Award. The award was presented in Bratislava on 15 October by French physicist Serge Haroche, the 2012 Nobel laureate in physics, who chaired this year's international jury.¹²

Galusek heads FunGlass at Alexander Dubček University of Trenčín, which the award organisers describe as the largest academic glass research centre in Europe. More than 120 researchers and doctoral students from over twenty countries work there.¹³

Sorting glass by what it is made of

Ordinary recycling lines sort glass by colour. His team is developing technology that sorts it by chemical composition and can carry out a thousand analyses a minute. The same idea could one day help recycle medical borosilicate glass such as vials and syringes, which today is almost never recycled.³

The team has also developed a new reference material for the chemical analysis of rocks rich in lithium or uranium, which is now in the patent process.¹³

Marián Janík won in the category for scientists under 35, and Iveta Waczulíková was named Outstanding Academic in Slovakia. The award is an initiative of the ESET Foundation.¹²