Gifted and Creative Education

Ayse Hilal is a fourth-year Ph.D. student in the Educational Psychology department and a research assistant in the Gifted and Creative Education program at UGA. With five years of teaching experience and an M.S. from SUNY Buffalo, she has developed a genuine interest in exploring the underlying social-emotional development mechanisms that drive learning. Her research focuses on the social and emotional development of high-ability students, particularly their well-being and motivation. Outside of academia, she is an avid reader and passionate Lindy Hop dancer.

Morgan is a first-year master’s student in Educational Psychology in the Gifted and Creative Education program. She graduated from Georgia Tech in 2024 with her bachelor’s degree in psychology, and her research focused primarily on spatial navigation as a form of cognitive ability. Her research interests are centered around finding new learning techniques for gifted students and studying their memory processes. Outside of school, she likes to read, watch TV dramas, and explore new bookstores and cafes.

Sofiia is a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in the Educational Psychology department and a graduate research and teaching assistant in the Gifted and Creative Education (GCE) program at the University of Georgia. Her academic background—-a B.A. in Cultural Studies and an M.S. in Science of Learning and Assessment in Education and Psychology–led her to pursue a doctoral degree in Educational Psychology with a focus on creativity. Her research investigates sources of bias in teachers’ identification of students’ creative potential, examining how teachers’ and students’ demographic characteristics, academic achievement, and motivation influence such evaluations. Additionally, she analyzes large-scale international datasets to explore trends in students’ creative thinking performance. Outside of research, she enjoys reading, playing piano, traveling, and hiking!

Yoojoong is a Ph.D. candidate and graduate assistant in the Gifted and Creative Education program at UGA. Originally from Seoul, South Korea, she earned a B.A. in Special Education with a minor in Psychology and an M.A. in Educational Psychology with a focus on Quantitative Methodology. Her research examines how cognitive, metacognitive, and sociocultural factors shape creative thinking and how creativity can be assessed more validly and fairly using advanced quantitative and AI-based methods. Her dissertation examines divergent thinking and creative self-concepts among U.S. and Korean university students using AI-based scoring and psychometric modeling. Her work has been published in Gifted Child Quarterly, Journal of Educational Psychology, and Education Sciences, with additional work under review at the Journal of Creative Behavior. Before joining UGA, she taught special education in Korea.

Katharine is a third-year Ph.D. student in the Educational Psychology department and a graduate assistant in the Gifted and Creative Education program at the University of Georgia. She graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara with a bachelor’s degree in Psychological and Brain Sciences and Communication. Her research focuses on the social and emotional needs of gifted learners and examines relationships between home and school environment and student motivation. In her free time, Katharine loves to travel, read, and create art.

Yasemin is a Ph.D. candidate and graduate research and teaching assistant in Gifted and Creative Education. She earned a B.Ed. in elementary mathematics education and an M.Sc. in mathematics education from Middle East Technical University. She has taught K-12 mathematics for over three years. Her research examines mathematical giftedness, mathematical creativity, and teaching for creativity. She is APA Division 10’s Graduate Student Representative. Her honors include UGA’s Presidential Fellow Award (2022-2026), Outstanding Doctoral Student in Gifted and Creative Education, Owen Scott Research Competition Award, and Dissertation Mini-Grant from the Mensa Education and Research Foundation.

Melanie is a Ph.D. student in Educational Psychology and a research assistant in Gifted and Creative Education at the University of Georgia. Before that, she was briefly a Ph.D. student at Tulane Math with teaching assistantships and Tulane Linguistics with fellowships. She was an undergrad at Beijing Jiaotong University (loved the food) and then abroad at Lake Forest College. She published some serious math (combinatorics) during undergrad and played softball, going to (China) nationals. She has documented fluency in English, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, and undocumented disfluency in about a dozen others. When the Georgia weather permits, she likes to drive around in a white beamer with a white mutt that sheds all over the white interior and knows how to put the top down.