Gyöngyvér Molnár is a full professor and the head of Institue of Education and the head of the Doctoral School of Education at the University of Szeged in Szeged, Hungary. Having completed her secondary studies at Lovassy László High School in Veszprém in 1992, she went on to matriculate at József Attila University (now the University of Szeged), winning scholarships from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences to study in Heidelberg and Münster. In 1999, she received her degree in mathematics and German language and literature, qualifying her as a secondary school teacher. She earned her PhD in 2004. In 2010, she habilitated in the area of ICT in education. Then, in 2017, she was awarded a Doctor of Sciences (DSc) degree with a thesis entitled ‘Technology-based testing in education: Assessing improvement in problem-solving ability’. In 2015, she was named full professor at the University of Szeged Department of Learning and Instruction and was also made director of the Institute of Education there in 2017.
She is the head of the Doctoral School of Education at the University of Szeged and she has chaired the ICT in Education Subprogramme there since 2007. She currently has five active PhD students and eleven who have defended their thesis.
Her main areas of interest include: technology-based assessment, improving cognitive skills, studying the quality of school learning, and the potential for using ICT in education – all of which are aimed at improving the quality of learning. She heads eDia, an online diagnostic testing system used in numerous countries and she is the head of the MTA-SZTE Digital Learning Technologies Research Group.
She has also published widely both domestically and internationally: over 350 reports and studies in all. The number of independent citations of her work exceed 1500, and she has a Hirsch Index of 24.
She is a member of, or officer in, a range of domestic and international professional organisations. From 2005 to 2014, she sat on the Learning and Instruction Committee at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (HAS), and she has chaired the HAS Education and Psychology Committee since 2014. She joined the Didactics Subcommittee of the HAS Education Committee in 2003 as well as having been a founding member of the ICT Subcommittee since 2009 and of the Research Methods Subcommittee since 2016. She serves on the editorial boards of numerous domestic and international journals: The European Journal of Psychology of Education (2015–), The Journal of Dynamic Decision Making (2014–), Technology, Knowledge and Learning (2014–) and Oktatás-Informatika (Education and Informatics) (2012–). She was the technical editor of Magyar Pedagógia (Hungarian Education) (2004–2020).
She was awarded the Bolyai János Research Grant by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences for 2005–2008 and 2009–2012 in acknowledgement of her work. In 2007, she was presented with the Academy Youth Award, marking the first time that prize had been conferred on an educationalist. In the same year, she was named an Innovative Teacher at the Innovative Teacher Forum in Paris. In 2009, she received a certificate of recognition from the Board of Governors of the Bolyai János Research Grant Programme. In 2014, she was selected for the U.S. Department of State International Visitor Leadership Program and went on to represent Hungary in the Promoting Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics for Women and Girls Program in the U.S. in February 2015. In 2016, she won the Apáczai Csere János Prize for her outstanding scholarly work in support of educational practice and in 2020 she received the Innovation Award of the University of Szeged.
