Leader in the project. She is a tenured professor at the Vytautas Magnus University and vice- dean for research.  She is a recognized expert in domestic criminal law and its evaluation from EU, comparative and international perspectives. 

She has various organizational and expert experience (programs evaluation, projects evaluation, preparation and implementation), is a chief editor  of legal journal “Teisės apžvalga”/Law Review. Her main research area – criminal law. Additional areas of public law she is interested in- legal ethics, migration, legal education.

She is the author of several books (one as a sole author, several with co-authors) and more than 40 articles in these and related areas. Drug issue from criminal law perspective has been one of her research topics for more than 10 years. She is teaching criminal law (both general and special parts), business crimes,  EU criminal law and politics (from 2018 ) and legal ethics and has had more than 17 years of legal practice.

E.Gruodytė was selected a National Reporter in EU projects „ Evaluation study of the legal framework applicable to combating terrorism in the EU Member States – Framework Decision 2008/919/JHA”, 2013 and “Development of an EU evaluation mechanism in the area of anti- corruption with a particular focus on identifying and reducing the costs of corruption in Public Procurement involving EU Funds”, 2012 for European Anti –Fraud Office (OLAF).

In 2014-2015 she was participating as a national expert in ALPhA-Project, organized by Germany on new psychoactive substances. She is accredited to supervise doctoral thesis, has three doctoral students at the moment. One supervised student writes Ph’d from EU law (“Principle of Mutual Recognition in European Criminal Law: Forms, Limits and Possibilities”).