Emma Bales is a second-year PhD student in Industrial-Organizational Psychology at the University of Georgia. She graduated in May 2025 with a B.S. in Psychology, Summa Cum Laude, earning CURO Undergraduate Research Scholar distinction and the William T. James Award for the most outstanding senior in Psychology at UGA. She has received over $19,000 in scholarships, research awards, conference travel grants, and fellowships, including the CURO Summer Research Fellowship and the Hamilton Lokey Graduate Scholarship. As an early-career researcher, she has already demonstrated success through multiple peer-reviewed publications and conference presentations.

Her research experience spans qualitative and quantitative methods, meta-analysis, agent-based modeling, and work on an NIH-funded R01 randomized controlled clinical trial. Emma has served as a teaching assistant for undergraduate courses in Research Design and Research Analysis using RStudio. In service, she reviews conference submissions for the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) and serves as the Social Media Chair for IOPSA, her program’s student-led organization. Emma’s current work explores team dynamics within Human-Artificial Intelligence teams and the role of individual differences in applicant reactions to organizational diversity signaling. Post-grad, she plans to continue research, teaching, and service as a Professor of Psychology.