Aleksandra Halchenko, M.A.
Aleksandra Halchenko, M.A. is the Founder and Chief Educational Neuroscientist at Neurocomb25 Lab, a Visiting Lecturer in the Executive MBA program at the Indian Institute of Management, Ranchi, and a JPB Fellow at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, with over 12 years of experience in educational neuroscience, teacher training, and learning science research.
She is a Ukrainian-born Educational Reformer, Executive Coach, Cognitive Poet, and pioneer of Bonsai Thinking, a conceptual framework she developed to describe and teach the three-dimensional process of learning, unlearning, and relearning. Aleksandra is a Member of the International Mind Brain and Education Society (IMBES), a certified coach through the International Coaching Federation (ICF), a Qualified Teacher in the United Kingdom, and a Certified Happiness Trainer through the Happiness Studies Academy.
As Chief Educational Neuroscientist and Founder of Neurocomb25 Lab, Aleksandra leads a learning research lab that translates neuroscience, happiness studies, and future studies into practical applications for education systems, organizations, and public spaces. Through her proprietary 3D Format, she integrates cognitive, affective, and conative neuroscience to bring about systemic change in education worldwide. Neurocomb25 Lab offers NEW ERA SUBJECTS, a neuroscience-based school curriculum, as well as certification courses for professionals seeking to become Educational Engineers and Bonsai Executive Coaches.
Neurocomb25 Lab presented its NEW ERA SUBJECTS Programme for Schools at the Learning Planet Festival 2026, celebrating the International Day of Education. Aleksandra pioneered Bonsai Thinking, a metaphor-driven framework that conceptualizes learning as a three-dimensional process: life-long, life-deep, and life-wide.
Drawing from the art of bonsai cultivation, the framework uses principles of pruning for unlearning, wiring and positioning for relearning, and watering and fertilizing for learning. Her foundational paper on the subject was published in the peer-reviewed journal Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence and Future Research. Read Introducing Bonsai Thinking: The Science of Learning, Unlearning, and Relearning for the Age of Continuous Adaptation.
In addition to Bonsai Thinking, Aleksandra developed PostScriptum Poetry, a cognitive technology she uses in her executive coaching practice, The Black Swan Verses Coaching, launched in January 2026. The methodology uses poetry as a tool for pattern disruption and retrospective insight, helping leaders discover hidden patterns in their experience, unlearn limiting beliefs, and relearn adaptive capacity for navigating complexity.
She is the author of The Black Swan Verses, a poetry collection published by Dost Yayınları in 2022 that introduced a new genre she calls Post-Scriptum Poetry for Learning, Unlearning, and Relearning. She also authored The Workbook on Learning How to Learn, published through Neurocomb25 Lab in 2024, a practical guide to bonsai thinking and the science of learning, unlearning, and relearning. Read From the Trilogy of Mind — Cognition, Affection, Conation to the Trilogy of Education — Neuroscience, Happiness Studies, and Future Studies.
As a Visiting Lecturer at the Indian Institute of Management, Ranchi, Aleksandra teaches a course entitled Empowering Managers through Positive Psychology and Transformational Practices to Executive MBA students. She is also a Strategic Advisor in Infrastructure of Happiness and Life-Wide Learning at Vid Sertsya Budova, a Ukrainian initiative focused on encouraging post-traumatic growth by integrating happiness and life-wide learning into public spaces.
In 2025, Aleksandra was selected by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health as a JPB Environmental Health Fellow, one of a select group of Ukrainian leaders contributing to the sustainable reconstruction of Ukraine. Her fellowship focuses on trauma-informed design, design for human flourishing, and creating educational spaces that support learning, unlearning, and relearning in post-conflict communities.
Her research publication, Neuroscience as a Black Swan of Teacher Training: Adding a Topic in Educational Neuroscience to a CELTA Course, published in 2025, examines the integration of educational neuroscience into the Cambridge CELTA syllabus, proposing the addition of metacognition and meta-motivation topics to one of the most widely demanded English language teacher training programs in the world. Her thesis at UCL on the same subject was evaluated as an original and important contribution to the field.
Aleksandra’s current research focuses on neuroaesthetics, investigating how art, poetry, and the built environment affect learning and wellbeing. Through the Neurocomb25 Relearning Environments Project, she applies neuroaesthetic principles to transform cities, workplaces, schools, universities, and hotels around the world, creating physical infrastructure solutions to foster wellbeing and life-wide learning.
Before founding Neurocomb25 Lab, Aleksandra held educational leadership roles across the United Kingdom and Turkey. She served as Director of Studies at Skola in London in 2023, Director of Studies at Bell Cambridge in 2022, and Director of Studies at British Summer School in 2022. Between 2018 and 2022, she was a Senior Lecturer at Istanbul University, and between 2019 and 2021, she served as a Teacher Trainer at ITI Istanbul.
Earlier, she was a Senior Lecturer at Istanbul Arel University from 2017 to 2018 and a Lecturer at Ibn Haldun University from 2016 to 2017, where she led the Creative Writing Club. Between 2020 and 2024, she worked as a freelance Policy Advisor in Education and Educational Coach.
Aleksandra earned her Master of Arts in Educational Neuroscience with Merit from University College London (UCL) and Birkbeck, University of London in 2024, as part of a joint program covering educational psychology, developmental cognitive neuroscience, genetics of behaviour, and neuroimaging methods. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Near and Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Oxford in 2023.
She completed the Train The Trainer program at the University of Cambridge in 2019 and holds a CELTA qualification from the University of Cambridge, along with Qualified Teacher Status in the United Kingdom in Modern Languages. Aleksandra earned her Master of Arts in Philology, specializing in Germanic Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics, with High Distinction from Petro Mohyla Black Sea National University in Ukraine in 2014.
Her BA thesis was entitled The Principle of Memory Selectivity in the Diaries of Max Frisch, and her MA thesis was entitled The Representation of ‘Du-Person’ (You-identity) in the Lyrics of Ulla Hahn’s and Veronika Tushnova’s Poetry: a Comparative Study.
She also holds a Certificate in Happiness Studies from the Happiness Studies Academy, where she trained under the mentorship of Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar, and earned a coaching certification from the International Coaching Federation. In 2025, she began the Sustainable Leadership for Ukraine program at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Aleksandra speaks nine languages including English, Farsi, and Ukrainian. She is a polymath whose interdisciplinary expertise spans education, neuroscience, happiness studies, philology, cognitive poetics, neuroaesthetics, and future studies.
Visit her LinkedIn profile, Academia page, ResearchGate profile, and Neurocomb25 Lab Homepage. Follow her on Facebook and X.