AI Leader of the Year
We are delighted to share that Dr Ioana Ghergulescu, Adaptemy’s Chief AI and Learning Science Officer, has been shortlisted for Digital Transformation / AI Leader of the Year at the 2026 Business Post Leadership Awards.
The shortlist brings together leaders from organisations including OpenAI, Workday, HubSpot, Manna Air Delivery, DCC and ICON, making Ioana’s inclusion a particularly significant recognition of her work in applied AI and learning science.
At Adaptemy, Ioana has spent more than a decade working at the intersection of artificial intelligence, learning science and education technology.
Her work goes well beyond applying AI to existing education products. It focuses on a harder question: how can technology understand learning well enough to make genuinely useful decisions for each individual learner?
That means building and improving the models that sit underneath adaptive learning: understanding learner knowledge and behaviour, modelling curriculum relationships, evaluating assessment evidence, measuring the effectiveness of learning content and using those signals to determine how a learning experience should adapt.
Ioana and the Adaptemy research team have also maintained a strong connection between academic research and real-world deployment. The team collaborates with universities internationally and publishes research into areas including adaptive learning, learner modelling and AI in education.
That combination matters.
AI in education is moving extraordinarily quickly, but progress cannot simply be measured by the sophistication of the underlying technology. The important questions are whether the system can accurately understand learners, whether learning outcomes improve, and whether the resulting experience works at real-world scale.
A Focus on Rigour and Impact
Ioana’s work has consistently centred on that connection between scientific rigour and practical impact.
Her research has contributed to large-scale adaptive learning projects and international research programmes, while her recent work has expanded into areas such as generative AI, intelligent tutoring, immersive learning and the next generation of personalised learning systems.
The recognition also follows another significant milestone for Ioana. In 2025 she was shortlisted for AI Person of the Year at the AI Awards Ireland, recognising her contribution to pedagogically grounded AI and personalised learning.
For the Adaptemy team, this latest shortlist is therefore recognition not only of Ioana personally, but of an approach we strongly believe in: AI for education should be built on an understanding of how people actually learn.
Congratulations, Ioana!
About the Event
The 2026 Business Post Leadership Awards take place on 12 November 2026 at the Round Room at the Mansion House in Dublin.
View the full 2026 Leadership Awards shortlist
