Dr. Qiwei (Britt) He is a Provost’s Distinguished Associate Professor in the Data Science and Analytics Program and the Founder and Director of the AI Measurement and Data Science Lab at the Georgetown University Graduate School. She is also affiliated with the Massive Data Institute, the Department of Psychology, and the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Georgetown. Currently, Dr. He is also appointed as Hughes Hall Visiting Fellow at University of Cambridge (2025-2026).
Dr. Qiwei He is an interdisciplinary scholar whose research advances cutting‑edge methodologies in sequence mining, text mining, psychometric modeling, and machine learning. Her work centers on harnessing multimodal data—ranging from log‑file process traces of human–machine interactions to eye‑tracking signals, virtual‑reality behaviors, and rich textual responses—to illuminate the cognitive and behavioral processes underlying human performance. As a prominent expert in psychometrics and data science, Dr. He designs and analyzes large‑scale assessments for test development, digital measurement, and next‑generation psychometric modeling. She transforms complex behavioral and linguistic data into evidence‑informed insights that deepen our understanding of cognition, learning, and decision‑making. Her overarching research goal is to build innovative, digitally based assessment systems and analytic frameworks that more accurately capture latent traits at both individual and population levels. Dr. He’s research is inherently interdisciplinary, spanning education, psychology, psychiatry, and public health, and her work consistently bridges methodological rigor with real‑world impact. Across these domains, she investigates how advanced computational methods and AI‑enhanced measurement models can strengthen validity, reliability, fairness, and inclusivity in modern assessment systems.
Dr. He has led or co-led 14 grants from government agencies, organizations, and industry, securing more than five million dollars in research funding. She has authored two books and over 50 publications (including journal articles, book chapters, conference proceedings, and research reports). Her co‑edited book, Process Data in Educational and Psychological Measurement, has been viewed approximately 242,800 times since its online release in 2018 and received the NCME Annual Award of Exceptional Achievement in 2023, an honor bestowed on only one contribution each year. Throughout her career, Dr. He has delivered over 80 invited talks (incl. four keynotes and over ten invited panelist discussions) at top‑tier international conferences such as the Psychometric Society Annual Meeting and at leading universities including Harvard University and the University of Cambridge, and has contributed over a hundred conference presentations. She has also conducted nearly 20 invited workshops and training sessions (nine post‑tenure) on advanced sequence‑mining and machine‑learning methods for educational and psychological assessment. Her papers appear in top‑tier journals in the fields of psychometrics, quantitative measurement, education, and behavioral sciences, including Psychometrika, Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, Computers and Education, Journal of Computer Assisted Learning and Behavioral Research Methods, just name a few.
Her accomplishments in assessment and data science research have been widely recognized. She was selected to the Board on Human Systems Integration at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, one of the highest honors for scholars contributing to national scientific leadership. She was appointed to the NAEP Validity Study Panel by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) to support the validity and fairness of the nation’s largest assessment. She was also selected to join the Committee for the Revision of the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing, jointly appointed by AERA, NCME, and APA, the field’s most authoritative professional standards.
Dr. He has also earned a strong global reputation. She was appointed a Hughes Hall Visiting Fellow at the University of Cambridge for 2025-2026 and an OECD Thomas J. Alexander Fellow in 2018. She recently joined the Scientific Advisory Board for the Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories (LIfBi) 2026-2030, overseeing Germany’s largest national education panel study. She has served on the Psychometrics and Educational Evaluation Panel for the UNESCO Institute for Statistics and the Policy Linking Panel for USAID since 2021. In 2024, she was selected by the OECD to join the Expert Panel for the First International Vocational Education and Training Assessment (PISA-VET). Additionally, she was appointed as a Special Expert for the National Examination and School Inspection Authority (NESA) by the Ministry of Education of Rwanda and for the Scientific Committee of the Ministry of Education and the Center for Assessment, Selection, and Placement in Turkey.
Her research collaborations extend widely across the United States and internationally, including partnerships in Norway, Turkey, Brazil, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, Germany, and more. Her interdisciplinary work also includes collaborations with MedStar Psychiatry, the School of Nursing, the Department of Psychology, and other Georgetown units. She has received numerous academic honors, including the NCME Annual Award of Exceptional Achievement (2023), the NCME Jason Millman Promising Measurement Scholar Award (2019), and the NCME Alicia Cascallar Outstanding Paper by an Early Career Scholar Award (2017). Her paper Examining Time Allocation Patterns of Low Skilled Adults on PIAAC Literacy Items received the Exemplary Paper Award from AERA’s Adult Literacy and Adult Education SIG in 2023.
Prior to joining Georgetown University, Dr. He served for more than nine years as a Senior Research Scientist in the Advanced Psychometrics and Data Science Center at Educational Testing Service (ETS), where she oversaw research on innovative item type development, automated assessment, technology based environment design, and sequential process data analysis in national and international large scale assessments such as PISA, PIAAC, and NAEP, as well as K–12 assessments and learning projects.
Dr. Qiwei He earned her PhD degree in Psychometrics and Data Science in 2013 at University of Twente, the Netherlands. Her PhD dissertation won the prestigious Dissertation Award from Abbas Foundation in the Netherlands and Exceptional Dissertation Award from Quantitive and Qualitative Methods Section in American Psychological Association (APA).
Professionally, Dr. He was selected to the Board of Trustees as Director of Sponsorship for the Psychometric Society and the Publication and Communication Committee of APA. She also has served as co‑chair for the Big Data SIGMIE and the Training Program Committee at National Council on Measurement in Education. She is currently an Associate Editor for the Journal of Behavioral Data Science and serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, Journal of Educational Measurement, Journal of Intelligence, International Journal of Assessment Tools in Education, and Zeitschrift für Psychologie. Her expertise in adaptive measurement, AI and data science is recognized by federal agencies and academic organizations; she has served on review panels for NSF, IES, and PCORI for many years and provides reviews for over 40 journals.
Academic Appointment(s)
- Primary
- Associate Professor, Graduate - Program in Data Analytics