HumRRO is pleased to announce Surina He as the 2025 recipient of the HumRRO Fellowship in Educational Measurement and Evaluation. He is a doctoral candidate in Educational Measurement at the University of Alberta, Canada, and is expected to defend her dissertation in April 2026.
First awarded in 2024, the Education Fellowship recognizes a doctoral student who “demonstrates exceptional research skills, academic achievement, and professional productivity” in the areas of educational measurement and evaluation, and is in addition to the HumRRO Fellowship in Industrial-Organizational Psychology, which has been awarded annually since 1998. (Read about the 2025 HumRRO I-O Fellowship winner, Karyssa Courey.)
CEO Dr. Suzanne Tsacoumis presented Surina He with the HumRRO Fellowship in Educational Measurement and Evaluation.
He’s dissertation focuses on an area of growing interest: “A New Analytical Framework for Assessing Individuals’ Collaborative Problem-Solving Ability: Insights from Communication Data and Computer-Log Data Analysis.”
“It grew out of a long-standing interest in understanding how we can more effectively assess abilities that have both cognitive and social components, such as collaboration and problem-solving,” explained He. “Traditional assessments often capture only static outcomes, but I was drawn to the possibilities of using rich process data—like chat logs and digital interaction traces—to model the authentic, moment-to-moment dynamics of group work. As I learned more about the importance of collaborative problem-solving in both education and the workplace, I wanted to develop new methods that could make its assessment more valid, scalable, and meaningful.”
The Fellowship selection committee noted He’s seven first-author publications in peer-reviewed journals as well as her refereed presentations at numerous conferences when selecting her as the fellowship winner.
“Supporting upcoming researchers with talent and promise like Surina is one of the most rewarding and important things we do at HumRRO,” noted President and CEO Suzanne Tsacoumis, Ph.D. “We are excited about Surina’s future contributions to the field of educational measurement in the future and are thrilled to be a part of her journey.”
“Being recognized by HumRRO, an organization with such a strong legacy in educational measurement and applied research, strengthens my confidence in pursuing work at the intersection of psychometrics, process data, and AI-driven methods,” said He.
She plans to use the $18,000 non-renewable stipend to support her dissertation research, particularly the computational and data-intensive analyses needed to model collaborative problem-solving abilities, as well as travel expenses to present her findings at conferences.
He is grateful to her doctoral advisor, Dr. Ying Cui, for her “continuous guidance, encouragement, and support and for shaping how she thinks about the future of educational measurement and its real-world applications. I would also like to thank my doctoral committee members— Dr. Mark Gierl, Dr. Okan Bulut, and Dr. Mijung Kim—for their invaluable insights and support, which have greatly enriched the quality and depth of my dissertation.”
Applications for next year’s HumRRO Fellowship in Educational Measurement and Evaluation will open on April 1, 2026.
