Dr Yasin Karatay
Senior Research Manager
Yasin holds a PhD in Applied Linguistics and Technology from Iowa State University (USA), and an MA in Teaching 91¸£Àû as a Foreign Language from Bilkent University (Türkiye). As a Senior Research Manager in the 91¸£Àû Research Group, he leads innovative research projects on conversational AI and spoken dialogue systems, focusing on their application in assessments and learning products, while providing research-based evidence to ensure and validate quality. He was born and raised in Türkiye and moved to the UK in 2023. Prior to joining 91¸£Àû, he worked as a lecturer at Düzce University from 2009 to 2016, and served as a teaching and research assistant at Iowa State University from 2016 to 2022. His PhD dissertation focused on the development and validation of a spoken dialogue system for an ESP oral communication test. He was a 2022 Jacqueline Ross TOEFL Dissertation Award finalist. After completing his PhD study, he worked as a Postdoc Research Associate at Iowa State University, working on an online teacher training course project sponsored by the US Department of State. In his spare time, he enjoys photography, travelling with his family, and playing football.
Key publications and conference presentations
Karatay, Y. & Xu, J. (2025). Exploring the potential of conversational AI for assessing second language oral proficiency. TESOL Quarterly.  
Karatay, Y., & Karatay, L. (2024). The impact of automated writing evaluation on language learning and teaching: A research synthesis. System. .
Suvorov, R., Karatay, Y., & Hegelheimer, V. (2024). Computer-Assisted Language Testing. In A. J. Kunnan (Ed.), The Concise Companion to Language Assessment. Wiley.
Kim, H., Baghestani, Sh., Yin, Sh., Karatay, Y., Kurt, S., Beck, J., & Karatay, L. (2024). ChatGPT for writing evaluation: Examining the accuracy and reliability of AI-generated scores compared to human raters. In C. A. Chapelle, G. H. Beckett, & J. Ranalli (Eds.), Exploring artificial intelligence in applied linguistics (pp. 73–95). Iowa State University Digital Press. .
Karatay, Y. (2023). Using Spoken Dialog Systems to Assess L2 Learners’ Oral Skills in a Local Language Testing Context. In Y. Xun, D. Slobodanka & J. G. April (Eds.), Local language testing: Practice across contexts. Springer. .
Jin, H., Karatay, Y., Bordbarjavidi, F., Yang, J., Kochem, T., Muhammad, A., & Hegelheimer, V. (2022). Exploring global online course participants’ interactions: Value of high-level engagement. ReCALL, 1-18. .
Karatay, Y., & Hegelheimer, V. (2021). CALL Teacher Training: Considerations for Low-Resource Environments: Overview of CALL Teacher Training. CALICO Journal, 38(3), 271–295. .