Lehrstuhl Demberg

The group of Prof. Dr. Vera Demberg is affiliated with the Department of Computer Science and the Department of Language Science and Technology. 

• The workshop “Generalized additive mixed-effects modeling” taught by Joshua Krause (University of Groningen, Netherlands) within the ERC-IDDISC project takes place on November 5th and 6th, 2024 from 9:00 to 14:30 in C7.2, meeting room 2.11. Sign up before October 25th: tinyurl.com/signup-gamm. The workshop details are here.
• Joshua Krause (University of Groningen, Netherlands) gives a talk on Unraveling latent cognitive progresses: A new Approach for modeling experimental effects within the ERC-IDDISC project on November 5th, 2024, from 15:00 to 16:00 in building C7 4, conference room 1.17. The talk details are here.
• Our lab will be hosting a guest master student Florence Yiming Liu from the University of Utrecht (The Netherlands) from November 2024 to January 2025.
• A new lab member since October 2024: Welcome to Maryam Esfahani!
• Our lab are hosting a guest doctoral student from the University of Amsterdam (The Netherlands) from September to November 2024: Welcome to Kata Naszádi!
• A new lab member since September 2024: Welcome to Anisha Saha!
• Our lab hosted guest doctoral student Oksana Ivchenko from Université de Lille (France) from June to July  2024! 
• New lab members since March 2024: Welcome to Dr. Laura Pissani, Dr. Varsha Suresh and Anwesha Das!
• Our lab hosted guest doctoral student Markéta Ceháková from Charles University (Czech Republic) in March 2024! 
• Prof. Vera Demberg has been elected as a member of the academy of sciences and literature Mainz.
• Prof. Vera Demberg has been awarded a Max Planck Fellowship at the MPI for Informatics -- from Jan 2024, she will also lead the research group on "Multimodal Language Processing" there.
• Change at the lab: we are sad to see Dr. Sebastian Schuster, Dr. Jia Loy and Dr. Marjolein van Os leave at the end of the year -- we will miss them! Also we are welcoming Dr. John (Jack) Duff to our lab from Jan 2024! 
• Nov 2023: Fangzhou Zhai successfully defended his thesis! Congratulations Dr. Zhai!
• Aug 2023: Marjolein van Os successfully defended her thesis! Congratulations Dr. van Os!
• Research Training Group 2853 “Neuroexplicit Models of Language, Vision, and Action” has been accepted for funding by DFG! It is set to start in Oct 2023 -- see https://www.neuroexplicit.org/ for details and job openings! 
• The Workshop on Individual Differences in Pragmatics and Discourse (IndiPRAG) organized by our lab will take place at Saarland University on September 18-19, 2023. Fore more information, please visit the workshop website.

In the news (selected)

• Please see our new episode on the Podcast "As I see IT"  and a newspaper article about it
• Podcast "Kleins Sprachgespräch" features Vera Demberg in its new episode "Wenn Algorithmen texten -- Wie spricht KI mit uns?" (via spotify)
• We're on TV! (in German)
• Lecture at the children's university (Kinderuni)

Research Topics

• Computational Cognitive Modelling
• Experimental Psycholinguistics
• Information-theoretic Models of Language Processing
• Coherence Relations in Text, Pragmatics
• Natural Language Generation
• Multimodal Language Processing (Language and Vision / Language and Body Language)

Current Projects

• Individualized Interaction in Discourse, (newspaper article) (ERC-STG 948878; Feb 2021- Jan 2026)
• Cognitive Modelling of Information Density for Discourse Relations (SFB 1102, B2; Oct 2014 - June 2026)
• Adapting text generation to individual users (SFB 1102, A8; July 2022 - June 2026)
• Safe Handover in Mixed-Initiative Control (SFB - TR 248, E2; Jan 2019 - Dez 2026)
• Cooperative User Interfaces as Rational Agents (SFB - TR 248, E6; Jan 2023 - Dez 2026)
• DFG Research Training Group on Neuroexplicit Models of Language, Vision, and Action (RTG 2853; Oct 2023 - Sep 2028)

Completed Projects

• Modelling the Information Density of Event Sequences in Texts (SFB 1102, A3; Oct 2014 - June 2022)
• Language Comprehension and Cognitive Control Demands:  
  Adapting Information Density to Changing Situations and Individual Users (SFB 1102, A4; Oct 2014 - June 2022)