Prof. Dr. Vera Demberg
Chair of Computer Science and Computational Linguistics
Department of Computer Science
co-opted Professor at Department of Language Science and Technology
Max Planck Fellow at Max Planck Institute for Informatics, Saarbrücken
Dean of Study Affairs (Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science)
Phone: +49 (0) 681 302 70024
vera(at)coli.uni-saarland.de
Saarland University
Campus C7 2, Room 3.02
66123 Saarbrücken / Germany
Research interests
- Cognitive Models of Human Language Understanding
- Natural Language Generation
- Experimental Psycholinguistics
- Multimodal Language Processing
- Experimental and Computational Discourse and Pragmatics
Mini-bio
Since 2024 | Max Planck Fellow at MPI for Informatics, Saarbrücken |
Since 2021 | Professor (W3) for Computer Science and Computational Linguistics, Saarland University |
2016-2021 | Professor (W2) for Computer Science and Computational Linguistics, Saarland University |
2010-2016 | Head of Independent Research Group at the Cluster of Excellence, Saarland University |
2006-2010 | Doctorate at the School of Informatics, Edinburgh University |
2008 | Internship with Google, Mountain View (3 months) |
2004-2005 | MSc in Artificial Intelligence, Edinburgh University |
2001-2006 | Diplom in Linguistics, Stuttgart University |
Prizes, awards, memberships
2024 | Elected as Member of the "Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur Mainz" |
2023 | Fellow of the European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems (ELLIS), 2023 |
2020 | ERC Starting Grant "Individualized Interaction in Discourse", 5-year grant, 1.5m EUR |
2014 | Selected for Falling Walls Lab 2014, Berlin; awarded A.T. Kearney Scholarship for the Falling Walls Conference |
2011 | Cognitive Science Society Glushko Dissertation Prize, awarded 10,000 USD |
2011 | Runner-up for 2011 CPHC / BCS Distinguished Dissertations Competition |
2011 | Runner-up for FoLLI E. W. Beth Dissertation Prize 2011 |
2008 | Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship Finalist, awarded 1,000 EUR |
2007 | Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship Finalist, awarded 1,000 EUR |
2007 | Young Scientist Award for the best platform presentation by a junior scientist at the 13th Annual Conference on Architectures and Mechanisms for Language Processing (AMLaP 2007) |
2005 | Edinburgh University Jim Howe Prize for best student in MSc AI |
2002-2006 | Full time scholarship from Evangelisches Studienwerk e.V. Villigst |
Professional Service (selection)
- Exec Committee member of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) in elected role of ``Member at large" Jan 2023 -- Dec 2025
- Program Chair for SigDIAL 2024
- Associate Editor for IEEE Journal Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (TPAMI; since 2023)
- Associate Editor for Journal Dialogue and Discourse (2016-2023), Issue Editor for autumn issue 2019
- Action Editor for Computational Linguistics Journal (2016-2018)
- Management Committee since 2022, in the EU-funded COST Action CA21131 -- Enabling multilingual eye-tracking data collection for human and machine language processing research (MultiplEYE)
- Workshops Chair: EMNLP 2019
- Senior Area Chair: ACL-IJCNLP 2021, EACL 2021
- Area Chair: ARR Dec 2023, ARR Oct 2023, EMNLP 2023, CoLING 2022, LREC 2022, CoNLL 2018, CoLING 2016, EMNLP 2015, EACL 2014, NAACL 2013, Student Workshop EACL 2009
- Best Paper Selection Committee: EMNLP 2020, ACL 2018
- Workshop Organizer: IndiPRAG 2023, DiSpoL 2015, CMCL 2014, CMCL 2013, Scottish Psycholing meeting 2008
- Standing Reviewer for journal Transactions of the ACL (TACL) since 2016
Invited Talks
- Keynote Speaker at CLIC-it Venice, December 2023
- Keynote Speaker at the 10th European Starting AI Researchers’ Symposium (STAIRS), October 2023
- Keynote Speaker at Text+, September 2023
- Keynote Speaker at CMCL Workshop, June 2022
- Invited Speaker at UKP-CIS Joint Invited Talk Series, Dec 2021
- Invited Speaker at Workshop on Computational Approaches to Discourse, Nov 2021
- Invited Speaker at the Eighth Swedish Language Technology Conference (SLTC), Gothenburg, Nov 2020
- Invited Speaker at Workshop "Explicit and implicit coherence relations: Different, but how exactly?", Berlin, Jan 2020
- Invited Speaker at EurNLP conference, London, Oct 2019
- Keynote Lecture at XPRAG conference, Edinburgh, June 2019
- Invited Presentation Fraunhofer Institut Erlangen, Nov 2018
- Invited Presentation at Workshop "Making sense of discourse", Utrecht, Sept 2018
- Invited Talk at Interactive Media Lab, Dresden, May 2018
- Invited Speaker at XPRAG.de Workshop "Implicit and explicit marking of discourse relations",Osnabrück, May 2018
- Invited Talk at CLASP Göteborg, Feb 2018
- Invited Talk at University of Geneva, Feb 2018
- Invited Lecturer at DGfS autumn school in Düsseldorf, Sept 2017
- Invited Speaker at Seminar Prof. Alessandro Lenci, Computational Linguistics Laboratory, Pisa
- Keynote Speaker at International Conference on Parsing Technologies (IWPT), Pisa, Sept 2017
- Invited Lecturer at Kavli Summer Institute (organized by Gina Kuperberg and Florian Jaeger): Computational Perspectives on Language Prediction in the Brain, Santa Barbara, California, July 2017
- Invited Speaker at CSLI Workshop: Bridging computational and psycholinguistic approaches to the study of meaning, Feb 2017
- Invited Lecturer at TextLink Training school in Prague, Feb 2017
- Keynote Speaker at International Natural Language Generation conference (INLG), Edinburgh, Sept 2016
- Invited Speaker at RefNet Roundtable Event, Aberdeen, Jan 2016
- Keynote Speaker at the 11th Syntax and Semantics Conference (CSSP 2015) in Paris
- Keynote speaker at Psycholinguistics in Flanders (PiF 2015), Namur, Belgium, May 2015
- The Index of Cognitive Activity as a Measure of Language Processing Difficulty. Invited speaker at Forschungskolloquium Universität Köln (invitation by Prof. Petra Schumacher), May 2015
- Let's not lose any information when mapping discourse relation schemes. Invited talk at COST action meeting in Fribourg, Mar 2015
- An information-theoretic perspective on discourse relation processing. Invited speaker at colloquium, Utrecht University (invitation by Prof. Ted Sanders), Mar 2015
- Invited Speaker at conference 'The Division of Labor: A View from Syntax, Semantics, Information Structure and Processing', Tübingen, Jan 2015
- The Index of Cognitive Activity as a Measure of Linguistic Processing Difficulty. Invited speaker at colloquium, University of Osnabrück, Nov 2014
- Short Presentation at Falling Walls Lab 2014, Berlin
- Invited discussant at Workshop on Perceptual Salience, Freiburg
- The Index of Cognitive Activity as a Measure of Linguistic Processing Difficulty. Invited Talk at KogWis Symposium 'Eye tracking, linking hypotheses and measures in language processing', Sep 2014
- Processing discourse relations and connectors -- a psycholinguistic experimental perspective. Invited speaker at 11th international congress on linguistics (CILG), May 2014
- An information-theoretic perspective on discourse relations and discourse connectors. Psychology colloquium Kaiserslautern, Jan 23rd 2014
- An information-theoretic perspective on discourse relations and discourse connectors. Linguistic Circle, Edinburgh University, Oct 4th 2013
- Measuring (linguistically induced) cognitive load in realistic dual-task settings. ILCC Seminar, School of Informatics, Edinburgh University, Sep 30th 2013
- Measuring cognitive load in dual-task settings. SFB Kolloquium Bielefeld, May 13th, 2013
- Prediction in Language Comprehension. Invited talk at University of Tübingen (Oberseminar Detmar Meurers), April 19th, 2013
- Invited Talk at KogWis (Conference of the German Cognitive Science Society) symposium, Oct 2012
- Invited Tutorial at Workshop on Tree-Adjoining Grammars and related formalisms (TAG+11), Sep 2012
- Modelling Incrementality and Prediction in Human Sentence Processing. Laboratoire Parole et Langage, Aix-en-Provence, May 11th, 2012
- Modelling Incrementality and Prediction in Syntax and Discourse using PLTAG. Computerlinguistik Kolloquium, Universitaet Duesseldorf, May 3rd, 2012
- Invited Talk at Incrementality in Linguistic and Musical Interaction Workshop, Queen Mary University of London and King's College London, 2011
- Incrementality and Prediction in Syntax and Discourse. Linguistisches Kolloquium, Freie Universitaet Berlin, April 11th, 2012
- Modelling Incrementality and Prediction in Syntax and Discourse. Computerlinguistik Kolloquium, Universitaet Potsdam, April 10th, 2012
- A cognitive model of sentence processing using PsychoLinguistically motivated Tree-Adjoining Grammar. Common Ground seminar, Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, March 28th, 2012
- CLUNCH seminar, Department of Computer Science, University of Pennsylvania, March 22nd, 2012
- A cognitive model of sentence processing using PsychoLinguistically motivated Tree-Adjoining Grammar. Computational Linguistics Colloquium, Saarland University, April 28th 2011
- A Broad-Coverage Model of Prediction in Human Sentence Processing. Whamit! BCS Special Language Seminar, MIT, Boston, MA, Oct 2010
- Modelling Prediction in Human Sentence Processing. Invited talk at the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation, University of Amsterdam, Feb 2010
- Modelling Human Sentence Processing (on YouTube). Google Tech Talk, Mountain View, April 17th 2008
- User Modelling and Content Structuring for Information Presentation in Spoken Dialog Systems. Talk presented at Google, Mountain View on February 15th 2008