Herbert ("Herb") J. Walberg
(retired) Distinguished Visiting Fellow, Stanford University Hoover Institution
Formerly professor Harvard University and University of Illinois at Chicago

Bio and Research Interest

Herb served as a founding member of the National Assessment Governing Board, referred to as "the national school board," given its mission to set education standards for U.S. students and measure progress in achieving them. He was also appointed by the President and approved by the Senate as a founding member of the National Board for Education Sciences, which provides policy guidance and oversight for education research.

Herb has given invited lectures in Australia, Belgium, China, England, France, Germany, Italy, Israel, Japan, the Netherlands, Portugal, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden, Taiwan, Venezuela, and the U .S to educators and policy makers. He has frequently testified before U.S. Congressional committees, state legislators, and federal courts.  

Herb chaired the Scientific Advisory Group for the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development project on international educational indicators. He has advised the government officials in Israel, Japan, Portugal, Singapore, Sweden, and the U.K. on education research and policy.

Herb has written or edited more than 70 books and written about 300 articles on such topics as educational effectiveness and exceptional human accomplishments. In his career he specialized in the measurement and analysis of conditions that make for outstanding accomplishments.

J. Douglas Willms
Canada Research Chair in Literacy and Human Development
President and CEO, The Learning Bar

Research Interest

J. Douglas Willms is a Professor at the University of New Brunswick (UNB) and holds the Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Literacy and Human Development. He is the President of the International Academy of Education, a Member of the US National Academy of Education, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He is the President and CEO of The Learning Bar Inc., an international company that provides research-based tools and training for enhancing the life chances of children and youth.

Dr. Willms has published over two hundred research articles and monographs pertaining to youth literacy, children’s health, the accountability of schooling systems, and the assessment of national reforms. He played lead roles in developing Canada’s National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (NLSCY) and the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). He and his colleagues designed the Early Years Evaluation (EYE), an instrument for the direct assessment of children’s developmental skills at ages 3 to 6, and OurSchool, an evaluation system for the continuous monitoring of student engagement and well-being. Dr. Willms is the lead researcher in designing the contextual questionnaires for PISA for Development, an initiative for low- and middle-income countries aimed at tracking international educational targets in the post-2015 UN framework. His research team is also working with school leaders in 30 First Nations schools in the design and implementation of Confident Learners, a whole-school and whole-community literacy program based on the science of literacy and instructional practice.

Ludger Woessmann

Professor of Economics, University of Munich
Director, Ifo Center for the Economics of Education

Bio and Research Interest

Ludger Woessmann is Professor of Economics at the University of Munich and Director of the Ifo Center for the Economics of Education at the Ifo Institute. His main research interests are the determinants of long-run prosperity and of student achievement. He uses microeconometric methods to answer applied, policy-relevant questions of the empirical economics of education, often using international student achievement tests. Special focusses address the importance of education for economic prosperity – individual and societal, historical and modern – and the importance of institutions of the school systems for efficiency and equity. Further research topics cover aspects of economic history, economics of religion, and the Internet. His work was rewarded, among others, with the Gossen Prize of the German Economic Association, the Young Economist Award of the European Economic Association, the EIB Prize of the European Investment Bank, and the Bruce H. Choppin Memorial Award of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement.

Yong Zhaoe
Foundations Distinguished Professor, University of Kansas

Research Interest

Yong Zhao is a Foundations Distinguished Professor in the School of Education at the University of Kansas. He is also a professorial fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Health and Education Policy, Victoria University in Australia. His works focus on the implications of globalization and technology on education.

Prof. Dr. Olga Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia
Full Professor, Chair of Business and Economics Education, JGU Mainz

Bio and Research Interest

Professor Olga Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia has been Chair of Business and Economics Education at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU), Germany, since 2006. She earned her doctoral degree from Humboldt University of Berlin in 2004 and her postdoctoral qualification in 2006. She has published widely on empirical educational research in vocational and higher education. She has directed numerous externally funded national and international research projects and has been coordinating the national research program ‘Modeling and Measuring Competencies in Higher Education (KoKoHs)’ since 2011. Her research has earned various awards and honors. She is a member of many national and international advisory and editorial boards and serves as an expert consultant to ministries, foundations, and international journals.