PhD students at starting line and researchers on stage. Polish Final of Early Career Researchers’ Grand Prix is over!

A microphone, a stopwatch, youthful passion and scientific curiosity all blended into an exciting whole, filling the stage of the UO Student Cultural Centre to the ceiling, where the Polish final of the Grand Prix of Early Career Researchers, a competition organised as part of the FORTHEM Alliance. took place on October 1st, 2025. The event was followed by the newly admitted students of the Doctoral School, who inaugurated their new academic year on that day, immediately before the Grand Prix final.

Some researchers fought against time, others against stage fright. All this took place in an extremely dynamic format of several-minute presentations, in which three brave and go-getting students of the UO Doctoral School competed for the title of best speaker among researchers. The Researchers’ Grand Prix is not just a show – it is a laboratory for scientific communication. It teaches that complex concepts can be explained with clarity and that the language of research does not have to be impenetrable. Participants had just four minutes to captivate the audience and the jury. ‘It’s a really difficult art. I’ve been working in the media for over 30 years and I face this challenge every day, so I know very well that it’s an extremely difficult task,’ admitted Jacek Rudnik, a journalist at Radio Opole, who, alongside Prof. Sabina Kubiciel – Lodzińska, and Cecylia Jacewska-Caban, an actress at the Jan Kochanowski Theatre in Opole, was a member of the competition jury.

This year’s winner was Khrystyna Shelvakh, who combined the scientific curiosity of a researcher of national and ethnic minorities with the narrative lightness of a story about three unique cities that crossed her life path at different stages. She won against Michał Petka, who took the audience on a journey through the world of conventions related to the diversity of meanings of robes, costumes and pontificals, and Gönül Güneş, an Opole-based PhD student of Kurdish origin, who transported the participants of the event to the world of patriarchal traditions and the struggle for respect for minority rights. “I was scared, but I also knew that we only make the greatest progress in our development when we leave our comfort zone, when we force ourselves to take on challenges we are afraid of,” said an emotional Khrystyna Shelvakh after the results were announced.

There were also reminiscences of the last year’s competition. A year ago, Wiktoria Grabalska and Robert Radziej triumphed ex equo. Both laureates could be seen on the stage again – Robert Radziej returned with his four-minute performance, while Wiktoria Grabalska gave a short interview during the jury deliberations, sharing her memories with the audience and giving some advice to this year’s finalists.

The audience was taken through the competition by Kacper Śnigórski, whose witty comments and excellent sense of the atmosphere of the event made the competition exceptionally light-hearted. The audience also took part in a live vote, selecting their favourites by means of an application. This made each participant feel co-responsible for the result.

The Opole finalists had been working on their presentations since June under the supervision of Dr Wojciech Opioła, deputy director of the Institute of Political Science and Administration at the UO and at the same time coordinator of the Opole part of the project, Dr Ewa Skrabacz from the UO’s Institute of Political Science and Administration, and Dr Iwona Święch – Olender, press officer at the UO, who polished their diction, control of stage fright and the art of condensing complex research into a comprehensible and captivating story. Aleksandra Krems from the Office for Research and Project Management of the UO ensured that the event ran smoothly, making the competition both attractive and well organised. This resulted in an event which, as Dr Wojciech Opioła noted, shows that the University of Opole not only educates and conducts research, but also teaches how to fascinate people with science and how to talk about it.

In the next stage of the competition, the winner of the University of Opole final will compete against the best speakers selected in the finals of the eight other universities affiliated with the FORTHEM Alliance. This year, the multi-national level of the competition will be held in Dijon, France.

For many people sitting in the audience at the Student Culture Centre on that day, the Early Career Researchers’ Grand Prix competition was just a taste of what might soon become part of a new chapter in their lives. The event was followed by first-year doctoral students from the Doctoral School, which officially inaugurated the new academic year immediately before the Grand Prix final.

“Today’s inauguration of the Doctoral School is a special moment for our entire academic community. You are embarking on a stage of education that requires not only research courage, but also openness to new prospects. We would like this place to be a space in which Early Career Researchers develop their skills, learn responsibility for their projects, but also acquire the competence to communicate their research results in a way that is understandable to a wide audience,” explained Prof. Anna Weissbrot-Koziarska, Vice-Rector for Education, during the inauguration. “This is where the future of our science is born – interdisciplinary, based on dialogue and ready to respond to the challenges of today.”

“I want to tell you something you may not hear very often: most of your experiments will fail. Most of your hypotheses will prove to be wrong. You will hear ‘no’ more often than ‘yes’. And that is perfectly natural. When cultures in Petri dishes do not grow, computer simulations fail, respondents do not complete surveys, statistics do not show significance, and your model fails – it will not be a failure. It will be science. True science,” said Dr Mateusz Pszczyński, Director of the Doctoral School, to the young scholars, emphasising the importance of effective communication skills, and group and community work. “The image of a lone genius working in isolation is a myth. The most important discoveries of our time – from mRNA vaccines to black holes – are the result of collaboration of people from different fields, different cultures, different perspectives. Learn from each other. A biochemist can teach a computer scientist about the mechanisms of life. A historian can open a physicist’s eyes to the social context of science. The most interesting discoveries arise at the intersection of disciplines.”

The joining of the Researchers Grand Prix competition final with the inauguration of the Doctoral School created a space in which young researchers could see that the future of their work will be shaped not only by the results of experiments or analyses, but also by the way in which they are able to communicate these results and place them in a cross-disciplinary context. And that modern science is not only about searching for new facts, but also about the ability to present them clearly and incorporate them into broader academic discourse.

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