Mikey Elmers works in the PINTS project ("pause-internal phonetic particles"), funded by the DFG (German Research Council). His PhD topic centres around modelling of pauses and phonetic particles for speech synthesis. He did his Master at Waseda University in Tokyo. Beeke Muhlack also works in the PINTS project, but is internally funded. Her PhD project will be on filler particles across languages. Before coming to Saarbrücken she did a Master in Marburg. Omnia Ibrahim is now a member of the SFB project (C1) on "Information density and the predictability of phonetic structure". She formerly worked at the University of Zurich with which her PhD work is co-organized.