Prof. Dr. Kai-Uwe Kühnberger

Since 2009, Prof. Kühnberger is leading the working group Artificial Intelligence at the University of Osnabrück. He finished his parallel studies in Philosophy, German Literature, and Linguistics (Master) and Mathematics and German (state exam) at the Universities of Stuttgart and Tübingen in the year 1996. A research stay as a visiting scholar at Indiana University, Bloomington followed his Master studies. Between 1999 and 2001 Kai-Uwe Kühnberger was a research associate at the “Seminar für Sprachwissenschaft” of the University of Tübingen. He earned a PhD in Computational Linguistics / General Linguistics in the year 2001. Between 2001 and 2003, he was a research associate for Artificial Intelligence at the University of Osnabrück. Then, Kai-Uwe Kühnberger was assistant professor for Artificial Intelligence at the University of Osnabrück. Since 2009, he is University Professor for Artificial Intelligence at the Institute of Cognitive Science of the University of Osnabrück. He was Dean of the Faculty of Human Science between 2013 and 2015 and is Director of the Institute of Cognitive Science since 2016. Kai-Uwe Kühnberger (co-)published more than 120 international scientific articles in different areas of Artificial Intelligence, such as machine learning, knowledge representation, neuro-symbolic integration, or cognitive architectures. He worked additionally as a reviewer for a large number of conferences and journals. He is survey editor of the journal “Cognitive Systems Research” and editor of the book series “Thinking Machines” (Atlantis / Springer). Together with Prof. Gordon Pipa Kai-Uwe Kühnberger is involved in a close cooperation with IBM, which is documented by the financing of PhD students or by several CEBIT exhibitions of the IKW in cooperation with IBM: „Flu Prediction“ (2016), „Smart Farming“ (2017), „Pepper and Watson in universities“ (2018) were such joint projects. In 2016, Kai-Uwe Kühnberger was awarded the IBM Faculty Award and in 2009, he was a SICSA Fellow (Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance). Kai-Uwe Kühnberger is spokesperson of the profile area „Cognition: Human-Technology-Interaction”.

Prof. Dr. Ursula Stockhorst

Our research focuses on “Brain, Hormones and Behavior”.

An important aspect that we wish to cover in our human-experimental studies is interdisciplinary research connecting biology, medicine (endocrinology, anesthesiology, gynecology) and neurosciences. The hormones predominantly studied are stress hormones, sex hormones and insulin. The paradigms employed are classical conditioning, stress paradigms as well as dispositions for the detection of odor and taste perception.

Prof. Dr. Nikola Kompa

I am currently holding a professorship of Theoretical Philosophy (W3; since 2011). I work on a variety of topics within the field of theoretical philosophy, with a clear focus on issues pertaining to epistemic evaluation on the one hand and language & cognition on the other.

Prof. Dr. Peter König

Peter König has an education in Physics (diploma) and in Medicine (approbation & doctorate). He has worked for many years with Wolf Singer at the Max-Planck Institute in Frankfurt, Gerald Edelman at the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego, and Kevan Martin / Rodney Douglas at the Institute of Neuroinformatics ETH/University Zürich. Finally, his research took him to the University of Osnabrück, where he is holding a chair in Neurobiopsychology at the Institute of Cognitive Science. His research focuses on embodied cognition and the neurophysiological basis of cognitive functions. This includes specifically multimodal integration and sensorimotor interactions. His more than 200 publications gathered more than 22.000 citations leading to an h-index of 58. Peter König is guest lecturer at the University of Hamburg and corresponding member of the „Akademie der Wissenschaften in Hamburg“. His research activities have bridged science and business by triggering three start-up companies: „WhiteMatter Labs GmbH“, „feelSpace GmbH and “Scicovery GmbH“.

Prof. Dr. Gordon Pipa

Gordon Pipa became Full professor (W3) and chair of the Neuroinformatics department at Institute of Cognitive Science at the University of Osnabrueck in Germany at the age of 36. Before he had hold a Group leader postion in Prof. Wolf Singer Department of Neurophysiology, Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, Frankfurt am Main, Germany and a Junior fellow position at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies (FIAS), Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Between 2007 and 2009 he was a Research fellow with Prof. Emery Brown with an joint appointment at the Dep. of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the MIT, Cambridge, and the Dep. of Anesthesia and Critical Care at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston.

Prof. Dr. Achim Stephan

Achim Stephan is head of the Philosophy of Mind and Cognition group at the Institute of Cognitive Science, to which he belongs since 2001, and co-speaker of the bi-local DFG-funded research training group on Situated Cognition. He studied philosophy, mathematics and psychotherapy & psychosomatics. In his PhD thesis from 1988, he worked on meaning theoretic aspects in the psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud; his habilitation thesis from 1998 covers—in a comprehensive way—various theories of emergence and their applications in past and present. His current research is mainly focused on human affectivity, particularly from a situated perspective. From 2012 to 2015, he was president of the German Society for Analytic Philosophy (Gesellschaft für Analytische Philosophie e.V., GAP); since 2017 he is president of the European Philosophical Society for the Study of Emotions (EPSSE).

Prof. Dr. Gunther Heidemann

Gunther Heidemann received the Diploma degree in Physics from the Universities of Karlsruhe and Münster, Germany, in 1992. From 1993 to 2004, he was am member of the Neuroinformatics group at Bielefeld University, where he recieved the Ph.D. degree (Dr.-Ing.) in Computer Science in 1998. In 2005, he joined the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering of the Florida State University and the Florida A&M University, Tallahassee, USA, as an assistant professor. Later in 2005, he became professor at the Institute for Visualization and Interactive Systems at the University of Stuttgart, Germany. He joined the Institute of Cognitive Science at the University of Osnabrück in 2011 as head of the Computer Vision group.

Prof. Dr. Jutta Mueller

Jutta L. Mueller is a trained psychologist (Diploma in Psychology, University of Trier) and specialized during her PhD and Post-doc (MPI for Human Cognitive and Brain Science, Leipzig) in the field of the cognitive neuroscience of language learning and processing. Her main research interests are concentrated on language and memory across ontogenetic and phylogenetic development. Currently she is heading the “Kindersprachlabor Osnabrück” at the Institute of Cognitive Science which is focused on the investigation of the development of language and cognition across the lifespan. The methods she uses include EEG, eye-tracking, fMRI, tDCS, NIRS and behavioural methods.

Prof. Dr. Simone Pika

Simone Pika just moved to the University of Osnabrück in Germany to start her own research group on Comparative Biocognition at the Institute of Cognitive Science. Simone’s research centers on the puzzle of language origins by using the comparative approach with a special focus on communication, development and underlying cognitive mechanisms. She studies different model systems involving pre- linguistic human children living in different cultures, non-human primates and corvids. In 2010, Simone received a Sofja Kovalevkaja Award of the Humboldt Foundation to tackle ‘gestural compexity across species and taxa’ and in 2017 an ERC-Consolidator Grant to study ‘The evolution and development of turn-taking’. She held group leader positions, assistant professor positions or research positions at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen Germany, the University of Manchester in Manchester UK, the University of St. Andrews in St. Andrews, Scotland, and the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada.

Prof. Dr. Michael Franke

Michael Franke obtained a PhD on applications of game theory to linguistics from the University of Amsterdam in 2009. He has been a PostDoc and a Junior Research Group Leader at the University of Tübingen, as well as a project leader at the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation in Amsterdam. Since 2018 he is professor for cognitive modeling at the Institute of Cognitive Science at the University of Osnabrück. His research focuses on modeling of higher cognitive processes, in particular decision making, language use and language evolution.

Prof. Dr. Sven Walter

Since 2007, I have first been assistant, then associate, and then full professor for philosophy of mind at the Institute of Cognitive Science. My research areas include embodied and situated approaches to cognition, in particular to self control, and the philosophy of free will.

Prof. Dr. Chadi Touma

The focus of professor Touma’s research group is to generate and characterise clinically relevant animal models of inborn (trait) emotionality and stress reactivity in order to elucidate neurobiological, endocrine and molecular genetic mechanisms underlying affective disorders such as major depression. It is only with deep insight into these mechanisms that novel treatment strategies and promising targets for therapeutic interventions can be devel oped in the future. The spectrum of our research includes projects at the genetic, proteomic and systemic level. We apply a variety of behavioural tests assessing emotionality, coping and cognitive functions along with neuroendocrine approaches to analyse neuropeptides and proteins involved in the activity and regulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) axis. Furthermore, we use paradigms addressing the interaction between genetic predispositions and environmental influences, shedding light on the epigenetic modification of behavioural traits and neurobiological endophenotypes.

Prof. Dr. Frank Teuteberg

Since 2007 Frank Teuteberg has been head of the research group in Accounting and Information Systems, which is part of the Institute of Information Management and Corporate Governance at the University of Osnabrueck. From 1996 to 2001 he worked as a research assistant to Prof. Dr. Karl Kurbel (holder of the Chair in Information Systems) at Europa - Universität Frankfurt (Oder), where he took up a postdoctoral position after his doctoral graduation in May 2001. From April 2004 to October 2007 Frank Teuteberg held a junior professorship of E-Business and Information Systems at the University of Osnabrueck. Frank Teuteberg is a member of the German Logistics Association. He teaches at Virtual Global University (www.vg-u.de) and is a regular visiting professor at ESCEM (www.escem.fr) in Tours/Poitiers (France). Furthermore, Prof. Teuteberg was the leader of a subproject on Mobile Supply Chain Management (run from April 2004 to the end of 2007) as part of the joint project MIB “Mobile Internet Business” which was funded more than 2 million Euros by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). Furthermore, he is the founder of the research network ERTEMIS (www.ertemis.eu), which is funded more than 2 million Euros by EFRE and Lower Saxony (project “IT-for-Green”). Since Nov. 2015 he is the leader of a subproject called “Dorfgemeinschaft 2.0” on Human-Computer-Interaction/eHealth which is funded more than 5 million Euros by BMBF and project leader of the project eCoInnovate IT which is funded more than 1.77 million Euros by VolkswagenStiftung (www.ecoinnovateit.de).

Prof. Dr. Roland Brandt

Neurons are one of the most extreme cell types in that they contain processes which can reach a meter or longer, contain more than 99% of the cellular volume, and provide the basis for innumerable synaptic input (Fig. 1). This requires the presence of a sophisticated molecular machinery in order to establish and maintain such a morphology. The cytoskeleton is the major intraneuronal structure that determines the shape of a neuron. From that it is not surprising that cytoskeletal mechanisms have an important role during the development of neurons and that abnormalities in the cytoskeletal organization are a hallmark of many neurodegenerative diseases. The group concentrates on the function of microtubules and their associated proteins, on neurofilaments and on the membrane cortex during neuronal development and neurodegeneration. In particular, a major part of the group concentrates on studying the involvement of the neuronal microtubule-associated protein tau during neurodegenerative processes in Alzheimer’s disease and other tauopathies.

Prof. Dr. Thomas Gruber

Thomas Gruber is a trained computer scientist and psychologist. He is an expert in EEG research and focuses on the problem how the brain orchestrates its cortically widely spaced activity in order to create unified percepts. In a series of studies, he examined the pivotal role of synchronized neuronal activity as a solution to this problem during object- and scene-perception (Hassler et al. 2011, Oppermann et al.,2012, Martens et al., 2011), mnemonic functioning (Daume et al., 2017, Friese et al, 2013) and -in cooperation with Jutta Müller- language processing (Bonhage et al., 2017). Recently, the so accumulated expertise is applied within virtual reality settings in order to increase the limited ecological validity of conventional laboratory experiments (Schöne et al., in press). He has supervised study projects in cooperation with Nikola Kompa (experimental philosophy, 2012) and Jutta Müller (development of auditory rule learning, 2013-2015 and artificial grammar learning, since 2018).

Prof. Dr. Kai-Christoph Hamborg

Dr. Tobias Thelen

Tobias Thelen studied Computational Linguistics and Artificial Intelligence at Osnabrück University from 1992-1998. Since then, he works in the field of adaptive e-learning systems. Thelen is founding member and currently deputy managing director of the Center for Digital Teaching, Campus Management and Higher Education Didactics (virtUOS). virtUOS conducts research projects and provides development and operating services for several universities and other educational institutions since 2001. Besides practically oriented development of learning management systems and other e-learning tools, Thelen’s research focusses on adaptive computer-assisted language learning systems (disseration project, 2009) and teaches at the Institutes for Computer Science and Cognitive Science.

Dr. Andreas Knaden

Dr Andreas Knaden is the managing director of the Osnabrück University Center for Digital Teaching, Information Management and Higher Education Didactics (virtUOS), coordinator of the Lower Saxony e-CULT project network, deputy director of the Lower Saxony E-Learning Academic Network (ELAN) e.V. and speaker of the Osnabrück University CIO board. As managing director of the virtUOS, he oversees the development of e-learning tools for innovative teaching and learning scenarios as well as the scientific research in various fields, such as educational data-mining, where he focusses on legal issues.

Prof. Dr. Joachim Hertzberg

Joachim Hertzberg, born in 1958, is a full professor for computer science at the University of Osnabrueck, Germany, heading the Knowledge-Based Systems lab. Since 2011, he is also head of the Osnabrueck branch of the Robotics Innovation Center of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI). He has graduated in Computer Science (diploma U. Bonn, 1982; Dr.rer.nat. 1986, U. Bonn; habilitation 1995, U. Hamburg). Former affiliations include GMD and Fraunhofer AIS in Sankt

Augustin. His areas of research are AI and Mobile Robotics, with contributions to action planning, plan- based robot control, sensor data interpretation, semantic mapping, reasoning about action, constraint- based reasoning, and various applications of these, in particular in agriculture. In his research fields, he

has been the PI in a number of national and European projects, has published widely (current Google Scholar h-Index 38) and holds two patents. At Osnabrueck University, he served as the Dean of the School of Mathematics and Computer Science. Awards for his work include the EurAi fellowship, received in 2014.

Prof. Dr. Alexander Bergs

Alexander Bergs joined the Institute for English and American Studies of the University of Osnabrück, Germany, in 2006 when he became Full Professor and Chair of English Language and Linguistics. His research interests include, among others, language variation and change, constructional approaches to language, the role of context in language, the syntax/pragmatics interface and cognitive poetics. His works include several authored and edited books (Social Networks and Historical Sociolinguistics, Modern Scots, Contexts and Constructions, Constructions and Language Change), a short textbook on Synchronic English Linguistics, one on Understanding Language Change (with Kate Burridge) and the two-volume Handbook of English Historical Linguistics (ed. with Laurel Brinton; now available as 5 volume paperback) as well as more than fifty papers in high profile international journals and edited volumes.

Prof. Dr. Angela Grimm

Seit 1.4. 2018 Professur für Didaktik der deutschen Sprache/Sprachwissenschaft des Neuhochdeutschen, Goethe Universiät Frankfurt (W3)

Seit 12.2014: Professur für Angewandte Sprachwissenschaft des Deutschen, Universität Osnabrück (W2)

2008-2014: Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin im Projekt „The role of migration background and language impairment in children’s language achievement“ (PI: Prof. Dr. P. Schulz, IDeA-Forschungszentrum Frankfurt)

2007-2008: Lehrkraft für besondere Aufgaben am Institut für Psycholinguistik und Didaktik der deutschen Sprache, Lehrstuhl für Deutsch als Zweitsprache der Goethe-Universität Frankfurt

2004 –2007: Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin in der Lise-Meitner-Nachwuchsgruppe „Repräsentation und Erwerb des phonologischen Systems“ (Leitung: Dr. I. Darcy, Institut für Linguistik der Universität Potsdam)

2002-2004: PhD. Studentin an der Universität Groningen (Niederlande)

2001-2002: Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin im DFG-Projekt ‚Linguistische Einheiten in der Schriftsprachproduktion‘ (PI: Prof. Dr. R. Weingarten, Universität Osnabrück

1996-2001: Diplomstudium ‚Patholinguistik‘ an der Universität Potsdam