DR Katina Tan
/ Senior Research Analyst
Dr Katina Tan joined Incept Labs as a Senior Research Analyst in 2025, after completing her PhD at the University of Melbourne. She brings a wealth of experience in education research, evaluation, and emerging technology, as well as being a qualified accountant.
As a Senior Research Analyst, Katina is working across Incept Labs’s education and learning projects. Using her skills in mixed-methods evaluation design and measurement, she has a particular focus on school improvement, teacher quality, and learner engagement. Additionally, Katina is working on research projects at Incept Labs to use AI technologies to map credentials and evidence of learning against educational and professional standard. This work is achieving faster, more consistent Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL), accreditation, and workforce development in a variety of contexts and jurisdictions.
Whilst completing her PhD, Katina was also Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne. She worked across a portfolio of projects on teacher effectiveness, initial teacher education, and the assessment of teacher practice, leading project design, stakeholder management, and evaluations. She also co-ordinated and lectured in economic evaluation in the Master of Evaluation program.
Before moving to academia, Katina spent more than 15 years in finance and strategic consulting. Starting her career in audit and advisory at a Big Four professional services firm, before moving to a senior finance leadership role with a sovereign wealth fund. After this, Katina took on the CFO role at an education services company. The Trust Schools Programme—a public-private collaboration with the Malaysian Ministry of Education—sought to transform government schools by adopting world-class pedagogical practices. Katina oversaw finance, ICT, and administration functions, while contributing to the company’s strategic direction. Combining her expertise in finance and passion for education, she also led a workstream to upskill school leaders’ financial literacy. The programme reached multiple public schools across Malaysia, demonstrating systemic transformation through structured public-private collaboration is achievable.
Katina initially completed a Bachelor of Commerce (Accounting & Finance) at Monash University. She returned to university to study a Master of Teaching (Secondary), before going on to complete her PhD at the University of Melbourne. Her PhD investigated student engagement in Malaysian schools and its relationship to student outcomes. Critically, her thesis examined how engagement is defined and experienced in a culturally specific context, challenging Western-centric frameworks, and offering a culturally responsive lens for understanding genuine student engagement.
She is a member of the Australian Association for Research in Education and the American Educational Research Association. She also maintains hers professional accounting accreditation as a member of Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand and the Malaysian Institute of Accountants.