Team
George Gunnesch-Luca
LST Lab Director · Associate Professor
George Gunnesch-Luca is Associate Professor at the Department of Psychology and Cognitive Sciences, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Bucharest, and Director of the Large Scale Testing Lab. He serves as the National Research Coordinator (NRC) for the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), overseeing Romania’s participation in TIMSS, ICCS, and ICILS.
His research focuses on educational measurement, developmental assessment, and applied Bayesian methodology. His current research program examines the role of motor competence in children’s social development, specifically the relationship between gross motor coordination and peer victimization in school-age children. He also investigates assessment fairness and validity in higher education, with recent work on high-stakes oral examinations using national cohort data. His methodological work centers on Bayesian multilevel modeling (brms) applied to complex educational and psychological data, including ordinal, zero-inflated, and cross-classified structures.
He obtained his doctorate and habilitation at Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (Germany), where he spent over a decade as a researcher in organizational and educational psychology. This background in psychometric theory, team dynamics, and measurement science informs his current work in educational assessment. He has published in journals such as Intelligence, Educational Psychologist, Journal of Research in Personality, and European Journal of Psychological Assessment.
He completed a postdoctoral research fellowship in Science Education funded by the Romanian-American Foundation (2020–2022), during which he produced national reports and policy papers on student outcomes, and initiated a research program on bullying predictors using IEA large-scale assessment data.
He is a member of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Psychologie (DGPs) and the Romanian Association of Industrial and Organizational Psychology (APIO). He teaches courses in organizational psychology, group dynamics, and statistical methodology at bachelor and master level, with a consistent emphasis on Bayesian inference and rigorous quantitative methods in the social sciences.
Dragoș Iliescu
Full Professor
Dragoș Iliescu holds a PhD in Psychology and is currently a Full Professor at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Bucharest. He is a prominent specialist in organizational psychology and psychological measurement, with extensive academic activity and practical experience. His competencies and academic work have earned him wide recognition within the international professional community — Dragoș served as President of the Romanian Association of Industrial and Organizational Psychology (APIO) and has been a member of the editorial teams of prestigious publications, including Associate Editor of the European Journal of Psychological Assessment.
He is author or co-author of more than 125 publications at the international and local level, on various topics related to applied psychology (especially psychological and behavioral assessment), consumer psychology and advertising, as well as marketing research. He is also a respected speaker at scientific conferences in countries such as the United States, Germany, Hong Kong, and Australia, with over 115 papers presented.
At the same time, Dragoș is a businessman with over 15 years of experience, with extensive consulting activities in hundreds of market research and applied psychology projects. He is the founder of Test Central (www.testcentral.ro), the largest publisher of psychological tests in Romania, as well as the Psyence group (www.psyence.ro).
His passion for education and the high level of expertise gained through involvement in international testing programs motivated Dragoș to develop Romania’s only Standardized Testing System — Brio — alongside elite experts from the academic and business community, offering a platform with scientifically tested solutions for evaluating and improving educational performance.
Vlad Burtăverde
Lecturer
Vlad Burtăverde is a Lecturer at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Bucharest. He is a psychologist and practicing consultant in organizational psychology and management with 8 years of experience in the field. He has led and participated in numerous consulting projects in human resource management and organizational psychology, most of them in personnel assessment and organizational development. Over eight years, he has conducted more than 2,000 individual psychological assessments and worked with over 30 work teams in professional and career development processes. Vlad has been involved in development and research projects in the medical and educational sectors.
He is active in scientific research, publishing articles in high-impact journals in the red and yellow zones (such as Career Development International), with an h-index of 8, and his publications have been cited over 200 times in the literature. He is a member of international professional organizations including the Association for Research in Personality, Society for Personality and Social Psychology, European Association of Personality Psychology, and World Association of Personality Psychology.
Lucian Ciolan
Full Professor · Vice-Rector, University of Bucharest
Lucian Ciolan is a Professor of Educational and Social Policy and Research Methodology at the Department of Educational Sciences, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Bucharest. Following four years of managerial activity as department director and eight years as dean of the faculty, since December 2019 he joined the new UB management team as Vice-Rector with a portfolio covering development projects, lifelong learning, and educational infrastructure.
His main areas of interest include public/educational policy, research methodology, teacher training, and applications of (neuro)cognitive sciences in public policy and learning processes.
His academic expertise is valued through involvement in various national agencies in education and research: chair of the ARACIS committee for Administrative Sciences, Education, and Psychology; member of the CNATDCU committee for Psychology, Educational Sciences, and Sports Sciences; and member of the Social Sciences Commission of the National Council for Scientific Research (CNCS). Internationally, he serves as Romania’s representative in the Council of the European Educational Research Association (EERA).
Romiță Iucu
Full Professor · Chair of the Board of Trustees, University of Bucharest
Professor Romiță Iucu is Chair of the Board of Trustees at the University of Bucharest and Professor at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences. With significant experience in international cooperation in education, Professor Iucu also coordinates the UNICA EduLAB Group, is Co-Chair of the FOREU European Degree Subgroup of European Universities, and is a member of the European University Association (EUA) Learning & Teaching (L&T) Steering Committee. Since 2022, he was appointed Magna Charta Observatory Ambassador.
Professor Iucu has held several leadership positions at the university level (former Acting Rector of the University of Bucharest and Vice-Rector for Academic Affairs for over 16 years). He is also former President of ENTEP (European Network on Teacher Education Policies) and representative in BFUG (Bologna Follow-up Group). He has had substantial and long-standing collaborations with the European Commission, Eurydice, World Bank, and UNICEF in various educational programs. In recognition of his professional activity, he was inducted as a member of The International Adult and Continuing Education (IACE) Hall of Fame and received the title of Doctor Honoris Causa from the West University of Timișoara.
Anca Nedelcu
Full Professor · Vice Dean, FPSE
Prof. Anca Nedelcu, PhD, is a faculty member at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Department of Educational Sciences. She serves as Vice Dean responsible for quality management and international relations, and is part of the coordinating team of the Master’s program “Innovative Learning Strategies: Teaching Master’s.”
Her areas of professional interest and research focus on equity, diversity, and reflexivity in education, educational management, and the influence of old and new media in education. She has completed specialization courses at the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands, is an accredited trainer through the “Advanced Training of Trainers in Europe” program run by the Council of Europe and the European Commission, and works as an educational consultant. She has coordinated numerous research and development projects, working in collaboration with the World Bank, UNICEF, UNESCO, the Ministry of Education, and others.
Cătălina Ulrich Hygum
Full Professor
Cătălina Ulrich Hygum is a Professor at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Bucharest. She teaches Sociology of Education and Civic and Social Education (undergraduate), Collaborative Learning, Parenting and Socio-Cultural Perspectives in Child Education (master’s), and Evaluative Research (doctoral level).
She promotes problem-based learning through interdisciplinary projects, a topic she deepened during her Fulbright post-doctoral stay at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (2011–2012). Her main research areas focus on social interactions in early childhood and the school environment, civic and democratic citizenship education, and equity in education. She has conducted comparative and evaluative studies for UNICEF, World Bank, CEDEFOP, INTRAC, Wolfensohn Institute, Bernard Van Leer Foundation, ISSA, UNESCO, IOM, and others.