Ali Derakhshan is Professor of Applied Linguistics at the English Language and Literature Department, Golestan University, Gorgan, Iran. He has been a member of the Iranian Elites Foundation since 2015. He received a nation-wide distinguished researcher award in Humanities and Social Sciences from the Ministry of Science, Research, and Technology in 2024. He is a visiting scholar at University College London, UK. Also, he is currently a Yunshan Chair Professor at the School of English Education, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies (GDUFS), Guangzhou, China. As authenticated by the Essential Science Indicators (ESI) Database, Clarivate Analytics shows his name among the world’s top 1% of scientists in 2024 and 2025. His name appeared in Stanford University’s list of the world’s top 2% of the most influential scientists in 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025. He has published more than 150 SSCI-indexed papers in accredited international journals. His research interests are educational psychology, technology in language education, teacher education, learner individual differences, and cross-cultural interpersonal factors in language education.