# Dragoș Iliescu

Dragoș Iliescu (born November 5, 1974) is a Romanian psychologist and academic. He is a professor of psychology at the Bucharest University (Romania) and an Extraordinary Professor at the Stellenbosch University (South Africa). At Bucharest University, he has been the director of the doctoral school of psychology and educational science since 2017.

## Education

Dragoș Iliescu was born in Brașov, where he attended the German Honterus-Kolleg up to grade 8, and then the Grigore Moisil National College of Computer Science. In 1997 he graduated from National Intelligence Academy in Bucharest with a bachelor's degree in socio-psychology. In 2003 he obtained a Ph.D. degree in psychology from the Babeș-Bolyai University with the thesis "Psychosocial Aspects of Organizational Change" under the direction of Professor Horia Pitariu. He specialized in 2 areas: (a) psychometrics, psychological and educational assessment, tests and testing, and (b) work and organizational psychology.

## Service in scientific organizations

In Romania, Dragoș Iliescu has been involved with several scientific and professional organizations, and has had leadership positions in two of them. Dragoș Iliescu is a co-founder of the Romanian Association of Industrial and Organizational Psychology (APIO). He served two terms as a council member, from 2002 to 2010 and again from 2013 to 2020, and one term as the association's president, from 2010 to 2013. He is also the Secretary-General of the Romanian Psychological Association (APR), since 2017.
Internationally, Dragoș Iliescu has held leadership positions in several scientific and professional organizations.
He has been a Council member of the International Test Commission between 2008 and 2018, serving as council member, as secretary-general, and president. His service as president is the highest position in a professional international association to be held by a Romanian. In 2018, he was recognized for his contributions to the International Test Commission and was named a "Fellow of the ITC."
As of May 2019, Iliescu is the Treasurer of the European Association for Work and Organizational Psychology.
He also is the President of Division 2 (Psychological Assessment and Evaluation) of the International Association of Applied Psychology (IAAP), since 2022 (having been President-Elect since 2018).
He is the Secretary-General of ENOP (the European Network for Organizational Psychology) since 2023.
He has served for 4 years as Editor-in-Chief of the European Journal of Psychological Assessment (2021-2024). He is now Editor-in-Chief of Intelligence (co-Editor with prof. Samuel Greiff).

## Entrepreneurship

Dragoș Iliescu has founded and managed businesses that focus on applications of psychology in different settings. In 1999, he founded D&D research, a market research/consumer psychology company. In 2003, he founded Testcentral Romania, which is now the primary publisher of psychological tests in Romania. In 2012, he founded 42 Organizational Assessment, a talent assessment company that is the SHL distributor for Romania, Bulgaria, Serbi and the Czech Republic. In 2016, he founded Brio Romania, which has become the primary platform for educational standardized testing in Romania.

## Research

Dragoș Iliescu's research addresses several topics. One of his constants are individual differences (cognitive abilities and personality), either approached from an assessment perspective or from an applied perspective.
He has had distinguished contributions to testing and assessment. In 2015, he was one of the Editors of the acclaimed ITC International Handbook of Testing and Assessment, that was published by Oxford University Press, a publication that was awarded the American Psychological Association (APA) Division 52 Gielen Book Award.
In 2017, Iliescu authored the book Adapting Tests in Linguistic and Cultural Situations, which was published by Cambridge University Press. The volume provides a step-by-step approach to cross-cultural test adaptation and provides reasons why adapting standardized tests to different cultures is important.
He was the Chair of the ITC task force that developed and published in 2023 The Test Adaptation Reporting Standards (TARES).
In 2024 he published the book Standardized testing in education at Humanitas Publishing House.