We invite doctoral students and young researchers from Lithuanian academic institutions who received the doctoral degree not later than 5 years ago to participate in a pitching competition at Kaunas University of Technology. The best-written pitches will be selected and earn the right to advance through the semi-final of the global pitch competition (IGPRC2025). The winners of the final IGPRC2025 competition will share approximately AUD20,000 monetary prize!
📅 Important Dates & Timeline
🎯 Core Task
The core task of this competition is to produce a written 1,000-word novel research pitch using the “pitching research” framework, PRF (see the attachment). This tool provides a simple, methodical device to communicate … confidently/succinctly … all the essential elements of a new research proposal to an academic expert e.g., to your thesis supervisor. For a detailed explanation of the PRF, see the latest version of the SSRN paper “Pitching Research” [Faff (2024)].
👉 Eligibility to participate
The competition is open to PhD students and young researchers from Lithuanian academic institutions who received the doctoral degree not later than 5 years ago, from any discipline.
🏆 Competition Prizes and Awards
The KTU winners of the best-written pitches will go to the semi-final.
Semi-final and final will take place remotely and will be organized by prof. Robert Faff (University of Queensland, Australia). The following potential prizes await the ultimate winners of the global IGPRC2025:
The overall IGPRC2025 winner receives AUD5,000, second receives AUD2,000, and the remaining grand finalists receive AUD1,000 each. Additional smaller cash prizes are available for other categories of high achievement. Further, all those making the semi-final and grand final rounds will receive an official certificate recognising their achievement. The total prize pool is approximately AUD20,000.
❗Read more in this attachment ❗
💡 IGPRC2025 Co-organizers at KTU:
Robert Faff, FASSA, is Emeritus Professor at the University Queensland. He has an international reputation in empirical finance research: securing 14 Australian Research Council grants (with total funding exceeding AUD4 million); 360+ refereed journal publications – 46 x A* (ABDC); career citations 23,000+ (Google Scholar); with a h-index of 74. His particular passion is nurturing the career trajectories of early career researchers. Robert has supervised almost 50 PhD students to successful completion and examined more than 50 PhD dissertations.
Building on a 40-year academic career, his signature focus is “Pitching Research”, with worldwide penetration signalled by:(a) 27,000+SSRN downloads; (b) 400+ pitching talks/events; (c) at 37 Australian universities; and (d) spanning 54 different countries.
Further, he is the Founder & President of the InSPiR2eS research network, a globally-facing research network primarily aimed at research training and capacity building, resting on a foundation theme of responsible science. In addition, Robert is Creator & Chief Scientist of the InSPiR2eS Centre for Responsible Science (IC4RS).
Neringa Gerulaitienė is an associate professor in management at Kaunas University of Technology. Neringa is a country node leader of a global research network “InSPiR2eS” in Lithuania. She organizes InSPiR2eS Global Pitching Research Competitions at KTU.
Neringa’s main research interests are in family business, innovation, healthcare management, and organizational resilience. Neringa has more than ten years of experience working on 7 national and 5 international research and studies projects. She has also actively participated at more than 20 international conferences such as the British Academy of Management (BAM), Strategic Management Society (SMS), and others; and published papers in high-level journals such as Technovation, Baltic Journal of Management. Neringa has received several awards, including the most active young researcher at KTU in 2023; researcher of the year at KTU School of Economics and Business in 2021; the most active PhD student at KTU in 2017; and academic achievements by the Research Council of Lithuania in 2018 and 2014. Moreover, since 2009, Neringa has developed her academic competencies at various international universities, including the Haas Business School, UC Berkeley, USA (July 2019 and June 2018); Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Spain (February 2022); ESADE Ramon Llull University, Spain (2017); and St. Gallen University, Switzerland (2020).
