Yulia Kovas

Yulia Kovas (born March 12, 1973) is a geneticist and psychologist - currently a Professor of Genetics and Psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London, and a visiting Professor at UCL, King’s College, Sussex and New York Universities - in the United Kingdom. She received British Academy Wiley Prize in Psychology in 2012.[1] Kovas is the director of InLab (International Laboratory for Interdisciplinary Investigations into Individual Differences in Learning) at Goldsmiths; the director of the Laboratory for Cognitive Investigations and Behavioural Genetics at Tomsk State University (TSU); and also co-directs the International Centre for Research in Human Development, TSU. She directs the Russian School Twin Registry (RSTR) and leads the genetically-informative mathematics research in the Twins Early Development Study (TEDS) at King’s College, London. She is also a scientific director of the Applied Cognitive Psychology and Neuroscience research direction at the Sirius Science and Technology University.[2]

Yulia Kovas at the symposium Brain and Culture at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, in October 2019

Kovas received her Ph.D. in 2007 from the SGDP Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London. Her thesis on Generalist Genes and Mathematics explored the origins of the individual differences in school mathematics. She received a degree in Literature and Linguistics as well as teaching qualifications from the State Pedagogical University of St Petersburg, Russia in 1996 and taught children of all ages for 6 years. She received a B.Sc in Psychology from Birkbeck College, University of London in 2003 and an MSc in Social, Genetic, and Developmental Psychiatry from the SGDP Centre, King’s College.[3]

Kovas' lab at Goldsmiths, University of London, InLab, conducts international, interdisciplinary research into individual differences in cognition, motivation, achievement and other educationally relevant traits.

Awards and grants

Kovas has received external grant funding from NIH; MRC; British Academy, Royal Society, Beijing Normal University; Russian Federal Grants; Erasmus+ mobility.[4] In 2011, she was awarded the ‘Mega Grant for Leading International Scientists’ (£3,000,000) from the Government of the Russian Federation to lead a program of interdisciplinary cross-cultural research into individual differences in cognition and learning.[5]

Kovas has received the British Psychological Society Award For Outstanding Doctoral Research Contributions to Psychology; Goldsmiths Peake Award for learning and teaching; British Academy Wiley Prize in Psychology; APS Janet Taylor Spence Award,[6] for Transformative Early Career Contributions; D.I. Mendeleev Medal from Tomsk State University for significant contribution to science and education; Russian Academy of Education Award for the significant contribution to fundamental and applied scientific research.[7][8]

Research interests

Kovas’ research focuses on the origins of individual differences in cognitive abilities, emotional and motivational processes and academic achievement – towards more personalised educational approaches and to better education for all learners.[9][10]  She leads several large-scale studies that combine different methods (quantitative and molecular genetics; experimental psychology; neuroscience) with unique samples, including twins; longitudinal cohorts of families with children conceived through IVF; adolescents exhibiting extraordinary performance in the domains of science, music, art and sports; populations with different socio-demographic and educational environments.[11]   Professor Kovas teaches and leads research projects at many international universities and is also a co-founder of TAGC – the Accessible Genetics Consortium that aims to promote greater knowledge and beneficial use of etiological information.[12]

Selected bibliography
  • Yulia Kovas and Philip S. Dale: The Genetic and Environmental Origins of Learning Abilities and Disabilities in the Early School Years, Wiley-Blackwell 2007
  • Yulia Kovas, Sergey Malykh and Darya Gaysina: Behavioral Genomics: Child Development And Education, Publishing House of Tomsk State University, Tomsk 2016, ISBN 978-5-94621-585-5
  • Yulia Kovas, Sergey Malykh and Darya Gaysina: Behavioral Genetics for Education, Palgrave MacMillan 2016, ISBN 978-1-137-43732-7
  • Teemu Toivainen, Giulia Pannini, Kostas A. Papageorgiou, Margherita Malanchini, Kaili Rimfeld, Nicholas Shakeshaft and Yulia Kovas: Prenatal testosterone does not explain sex differences in spatial ability, Scientific Reports volume 8, Article number 13653, 2018 at www.nature.com[13]

References
  1. "Wiley Prize in Psychology". The British Academy. Retrieved 2020-07-22.
  2. "Yulia Kovas - Google Scholar". scholar.google.co.uk. Retrieved 2020-09-05.
  3. report, Combined (2012-03-20). "Revitalizing Russian science". www.rbth.com. Retrieved 2020-09-05.
  4. report, Combined (2012-03-20). "Revitalizing Russian science". www.rbth.com. Retrieved 2020-09-05.
  5. report, Combined (2012-03-20). "Revitalizing Russian science". www.rbth.com. Retrieved 2020-09-05.
  6. "2013 Janet Taylor Spence Award". Association for Psychological Science - APS. Retrieved 2020-07-22.
  7. "Professor Yulia Kovas". Goldsmiths, University of London. Retrieved 2020-07-22.
  8. "Team". TAGC - EN. Retrieved 2020-07-22.
  9. "Professor Yulia Kovas". Goldsmiths, University of London. Retrieved 2020-09-05.
  10. report, Combined (2012-03-20). "Revitalizing Russian science". www.rbth.com. Retrieved 2020-09-05.
  11. "Professor Yulia Kovas". Goldsmiths, University of London. Retrieved 2020-09-05.
  12. "Home". TAGC - EN. Retrieved 2020-09-05.
  13. Malanchini, Margherita; Rimfeld, Kaili; Shakeshaft, Nicholas G.; McMillan, Andrew; Schofield, Kerry L.; Rodic, Maja; Rossi, Valerio; Kovas, Yulia; Dale, Philip S.; Tucker-Drob, Elliot M.; Plomin, Robert (2020-07-02). "Evidence for a unitary structure of spatial cognition beyond general intelligence". npj Science of Learning. 5 (1): 1–13. doi:10.1038/s41539-020-0067-8. ISSN 2056-7936.
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