About Us

Devel­op­ment of Glob­al Tal­ent Men­tor­ing began in late 2017 with the goal of cre­at­ing a research-based pro­gram to men­tor excep­tion­al­ly tal­ent­ed stu­dents in sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, engi­neer­ing, math­e­mat­ics, and med­ical sci­ences (STEMM).

The impe­tus for the pro­gram came from the work done on tal­ent devel­op­ment and men­tor­ing by Prof. Dr. Hei­drun Stoeger and Prof. Drs. Albert Ziegler. Since 2005, Prof. Dr. Stoeger and Prof. Drs. Albert Ziegler have been direct­ing Cyber­Men­tor, a suc­cess­ful, Ger­many-wide online men­tor­ing pro­gram. Cyber­Men­tor sup­ports girls between the ages of 12 and 18 years in devel­op­ing their inter­ests in STEM. With the help of Cyber­Men­tor, Prof. Dr. Stoeger and her team have con­duct­ed exten­sive research on online men­tor­ing in STEM and tal­ent devel­op­ment. The method­i­cal­ly rig­or­ous accom­pa­ny­ing research has been described in numer­ous peer-reviewed pub­li­ca­tions.

Prof. Dr. Stoeger and Prof. Drs. Ziegler con­tin­ued their work in tal­ent devel­op­ment, along with the UNESCO-rec­og­nized Ham­dan Bin Rashid Al Mak­toum Foun­da­tion for Med­ical and Edu­ca­tion­al Sci­ences, which has an estab­lished com­mit­ment to improv­ing edu­ca­tion. Togeth­er, they devel­oped the “Gift­ed Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion Kit for the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates,” a com­pre­hen­sive suite of test­ing mate­ri­als, train­ing units, and guid­ance frame­works for tal­ent devel­op­ment, which iden­ti­fies tal­ent­ed stu­dents and sup­ports their ongo­ing tal­ent devel­op­ment by match­ing them with appro­pri­ate edu­ca­tion­al offer­ings. The Gift­ed Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion Kit has been suc­cess­ful­ly imple­ment­ed to assess stu­dents’ tal­ents nation­wide in the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates and facil­i­tate opti­mal tal­ent development.

The lat­est result of the col­lab­o­ra­tion between Prof. Dr. Stoeger, Prof. Drs. Ziegler, and the Ham­dan Foun­da­tion is the World Gift­ed­ness Cen­ter. The World Gift­ed­ness Cen­ter is a vir­tu­al cen­ter that launched in late 2021 and facil­i­tates com­pre­hen­sive, evi­dence-based gift­ed edu­ca­tion and tal­ent sup­port across all coun­tries, cul­tures, and regions of the world. The cen­ter serves as a cat­a­lyst for world­wide efforts to cul­ti­vate the devel­op­ment of excel­lence for all individuals.

 

Prof. Dr. Stoeger con­ceived Glob­al Tal­ent Men­tor­ing as a flag­ship offer­ing of the World Gift­ed­ness Cen­ter. Dis­tinct in its research-based, long-term men­tor­ing approach, Glob­al Tal­ent Men­tor­ing enables tal­ent­ed stu­dents from all regions and coun­tries to devel­op their tal­ent in a STEMM domain through men­tor­ing by renowned inter­na­tion­al experts. Glob­al Tal­ent Men­tor­ing uses a self-devel­oped, spe­cial­ized plat­form that enables and sup­ports men­tor­ing for tal­ent­ed stu­dents all over the world. Glob­al Tal­ent Men­tor­ing is sup­port­ed by its glob­al net­work of part­ner insti­tu­tions that help find tal­ent­ed stu­dents in STEMM domains and recruit extra­or­di­nary researchers and pro­fes­sion­als who excel in their STEMM area and serve as men­tors for Glob­al Tal­ent Mentoring.

After four years of con­cep­tu­al­iza­tion by a team at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Regens­burg, the first three years of the planned ten-year pilot was imple­ment­ed by teams at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Regens­burg, the Friedrich Alexan­der Uni­ver­si­ty of Erlan­gen-Nurem­berg, and the Ham­dan Foun­da­tion. As of 8 Octo­ber 2024, the pro­gram is sole­ly oper­at­ed by the Ham­dan Foun­da­tion in Dubai.