Project goal

The four Alliance partners are home to numerous individual laboratories with innovative research equipment. In the humanities, social sciences and neurosciences, these are often used for data acquisition on topics of information and language processing, with a focus on e.g., language learning, usability, speech therapy, neural bases of linguistic functions and their change under pathophysiological conditions. The applicants are members of the Charité and the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. The goal is to make the individual laboratories of the Berlin University Alliance more accessible to students as shared resource (junior) researchers. To this end, the following actions are being taken:

• the individual laboratories and the existing equipment will be catalogued in a database, and the management of laboratories will be supported as a shared resource; protocols for laboratory access, use, and data protection are published and shared with a wider user audience
• infrastructure will be created in order to effectively transfer and exchange the know-how of researchers already established in these fields in the use of methods and devices as well as in data analysis and interpretation; to this end, training units, courses, workshops and e-learning units on topics such as experimental designs, device use, evaluation standards, e.g., for eye-movement or EEG studies, statistical training and source localization in the brain are offered.

Planned outcomes

• Creation and publication of protocols and instructional videos for statistical analysis of the collected data, see, e.g. „Laboratory Procedure“ (March 2020)
• The individual language processing laboratories of the Berlin University Alliance will be made more accessible to students and shared resource (junior) researchers, for instance, via training courses. For an example in winter term 2021/22
• Inter-institution cooperation in Berlin makes it possible to bring together cutting-edge know-how in the field of experimental language research. This will benefit the science location Berlin.
• Publications (videos and protocols) will document the developed infrastructure and know-how; knowledge regarding the infrastructure will be made available to researchers world-wide.

Project website and contact

Principal Investigators (PIs)

• Prof. Dr. Fabian Klostermann
  Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin
  Email: fabian.klostermann@charite.de
• Prof. Dr. Pia Knoeferle
  Institut für deutsche Sprache und Linguistik
  Sprach- und literaturwissenschaftliche Fakultät
  Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
  Email: pia.knoeferle@hu-berlin.de 

Co-PIs

• Prof. Dr. Elke Greifeneder
  Institut für Bibliotheks- und Informationswissenschaft
  Philosophische Fakultät
  Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
  Email: greifeneder@ibi.hu-berlin.de
• Prof. Dr. Agnes Villwock
  Institut für Rehabilitationswissenschaften
  Kultur-, Sozial- und Bildungswissenschaftliche Fakultät
  Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
  Email: agnes.villwock@hu-berlin.de
• Prof. Dr. Michael Wahl
  Institut für Rehabilitationswissenschaften
  Kultur-, Sozial- und Bildungswissenschaftliche Fakultät
  Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
  Email: michael.arnold-wahl@hu-berlin.de 

Project collaborators

• Michelle Wyrobnik
  Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin
  Email: michelle.wyrobnik@charite.de
• Dr. Valentina Pescuma
  Institut für deutsche Sprache und Linguistik
  Sprach- und literaturwissenschaftliche Fakultät
  Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
  Email: pescumav@hu-berlin.de

• Luise Henneberg
  Institut für Bibliotheks- und Informationswissenschaft
  Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
  E-Mail: luise.henneberg@hu-berlin.de 
• Hannes Schnaitter (Project collaborator from 01.02.2022 - 31.01.2023)
  Institut für Bibliotheks- und Informationswissenschaft
  Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
  E-Mail: hannes.schnaitter.1@ibi.hu-berlin.de
• Dr. Aine Ito
  Department of English Language and Literature
  National University of Singapore
  E-Mail: aine.ito@nus.edu.sg