Thursday - 16 October, 2025

14h30 – 17h30

From idea to EU proposal: Writing smarter with AI (pre-Hackathon primer)

Format: Experience sharing, interactive, discussion-led (not laptop-based)

Trainer: Innovayt

Audience: Final-year PhD candidates and early postdocs who haven’t yet taken an EU proposal from blank page to submission.

This 3-hour primer provides early-stage researchers with a common language, a clear understanding of what evaluators look for, and the confidence to participate in INL’s hackathon. The session focuses on a few critical building blocks of EU proposals, rather than covering “everything about proposals,” so participants leave with solid foundations they can build on in the hackathon.

What you’ll learn:

• Define the problem & pitch it (major emphasis). Turn a research idea into a crisp problem statement, a working title, and a one-minute pitch. Expect facilitator-led examples for discussion to understand what makes a great pitch.

• State-of-the-Art → gap → impact (major emphasis). An exercise to map prior art to surface the real gap and articulate the intended scientific impact. This aims to directly mirror the hackathon’s SoTA/Challenges/Breakthroughs/Impact work plan.

• SMART objectives (concise primer). Translate the research problem into clear, testable objectives and success criteria you can iterate during the hackathon. The goal is to understand what is too little and what is too much.

• Execution at a glance (concise primer). Sketch a minimal work-package outline and realistic timeline; identify top technical/operational risks and straightforward mitigations. Deep budgeting and admin details are out of scope for this short session.

• Using AI well (woven in, demo-style). Along with the four topics above, see how AI assistants can help refine problem statements, probe the SoTA, and stress-test objectives, demo-ed by the trainer live. When applicable, anonymised examples will draw from INL’s research areas.

Format & materials

• Interactive by design. We’ll prioritise discussion and example critique over slide-reading; this trades breadth of content for deeper learning on the most critical parts for those starting the journey.

• Slides & follow-up. A slide deck will be used during the training + screen sharing will be used when using AI tools. An annotated deck (handbook-style) will be shared afterwards to recap key points. The session will not be video recorded or livestreamed.