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. 

• M. Hamza Mughal, Rishabh Dabral, Vera Demberg, and Christian Theobalt won the Best Paper Award at the 1st International Workshop on IPA 2026 at CVPR 2026 for the paper “MIBURI: Towards Expressive Interactive Gesture Synthesis”.
• Anwesha Das won the Best Student Paper Award at AAMAS 2026 for the paper "Planning Ahead with RSA: Efficient Signalling in Dynamic Environments by Projecting User Awareness across Future Timesteps".
  Co-authors: John Duff, Jörg Hoffmann, and Vera Demberg.
• Iza Škrjanec, Irene Elisabeth Winther, Vera Demberg, and Stefan L. Frank won the Honorable Mention Award at CMCL 2026 for the paper “Is Cross-Lingual Transfer in Bilingual Models Human-Like? A Study with Overlapping Word Forms in Dutch and English”.
• Alexandra Mayn successfully defended her thesis today (June 03, 2026)! Congratulations, Dr. Mayn!
• Dongqi Liu successfully defended his thesis today (May 29, 2026)! Congratulations, Dr. Liu!
• Margarita Ryzhova successfully defended her thesis today (May 26, 2026)! Congratulations, Dr. Ryzhova!
• Prof. Ira Noveck (CNRS & Université de Paris-Cité) gave a talk “Reconfiguring Figurative Language” on June 2, 4:15 p.m. in seminar room 1.12 in building C7 3.
• New research assistant from May 1st, 2026: Welcome to Natalia Bila!
• Xudong Hong successfully defended his thesis today (Feb 27, 2026)! Congratulations, Dr. Hong!
• Prof. Demberg gave a talk to Korean visiting students from the University of Seoul as part of UoS career Expedition.
• Our lab hosted a guest PhD student Yiyi Chen from Aalborg University (Denmark) from February to April 2026.
• New PhD lab member from September 15, 2025: Welcome to  Guifu Liu!
• Our lab hosted guest student Ema Marušić from the University of Zagreb (Croatia) in September 2025.

In the news (selected)

• New article on how code processing in the brain can be understood via psycholinguistic methods, came out in Scientific Reports.
• 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

• 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

• Individualized Interaction in Discourse, (newspaper article) (ERC-STG 948878; Feb 2021- Jan 2026)
• 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)