Research Challenge

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CFA Institute Research Challenge

The CFA Institute Research Challenge is an annual global competition that connects university students with investment professionals from within the CFA Society® network. The competition provides students with hands-on mentoring and intensive training in financial analysis and ethics and tests participants' analytical, valuation, reporting writing, and presentation skills.

Members of our society, along with a faculty advisor and an industry mentor, work with teams of students to value a stock, write a research report, and present their recommendations. Teams then compete with peers from other schools at local-level competitions organized and judged by CFA Society members and volunteers. The winning university team(s) from each local competition then advances to see who will become the sub-regional, regional, and global champions. 

Learn more and read FAQs See the schedule and get involved

Local Research Challenge

The CFA Society Pittsburgh local Investment Research Challenge (IRC) is currently underway for the 2024-2025 year!

We are excited to partner with L.B. Foster and their great team as our subject company. Special thanks to the L.B. Foster team for hosting our kickoff event at their corporate headquarters!

The competition this year consists of five universities: Penn State University – Behrend, Penn State University – University Park, Robert Morris University, University of Pittsburgh and West Virginia University.

The next key events include:

-            December 6th, 2024 – Q&A with Company Management

-            February 6th, 2025 – Final Reports Due

-            February 25th, 2025 – Local Final Presentation

o   Hosted at The Rivers Club in Pittsburgh

 

Friends of the IRC include: 

Faculty advisors: Dr. Akin Sayrak, Dr. Christoph Hinkelmann, Dr. Greg Filbeck, Dr. Sabatino Silveri, and Dr. Riza Emekter

Industry mentor volunteers: Cale Grove, Geoffrey Ensby, Nick Conti, Nick Findley, and Steve Garbon

Report grader volunteers: TBD – accepting volunteers

Presentation judge volunteers: TBD – accepting volunteers

If you’d like to participate as a volunteer to grade the written report or judge the live presentation, please let the local IRC host, Jason Pettner, know. Best of luck during the competitions to our participating schools!

~Jason Pettner (2024-2025 Local IRC host)

Logo for the 2024-2025 IRC subject company