Short presentation

I am a professor of language technology and computational linguistics and head of the Centre for Language Technology.

In my research, I focus on how language technology and generative AI can be better accommodated to the linguistic and cultural characteristics of our language communities, and I have a particular focus on Danish, as seen in my engagement in the government-driven AI initiative Danish Foundation Models, among others. I also participate in collaborations with other Nordic and European countries and lead the Nordic project CAALLM (Culture-Sensitive Assessment and Adjustment of Lange Language Models – Adaption to the Nordic-Baltic Societies) funded by NordForsk on responsible AI.

In a European context, I lead two work packages in the EU project ELEXAI concerned with the application of high quality dictionaries for linguistic and cultural adaption of LLMs to our European societies.

I have a passion for metaphors and lead the METALLM project (Metaphors in LLMs) together with my colleague Ali Basirat funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark. The project examines metaphors in large language models and compares them with how we as humans interpret metaphors.

Current research

• CAALLM: 'Culture-Sensitive Assessment and Adjustment of Lange Language Models – Adaption to the Nordic-Baltic Societies' bevilget af NordForsk.   (2026-2029)
• METALLM (Metaphors in LLMs) funded by Danmarks Frie Forskningsfond. (2026-2029)
• ELEXAI EU Infradev Infrastructure (Horizon Europe) (2026-2029)
• The Benchmark Project (2023-2026)
• Danish Foundation Models 
• COR - A Central Word Register for Danish - a computational lexicon for AI (2021-2023)
• Lexicography used in Language technology (EU H2020 project "ELEXIS" 2018-2022)
• Semantic annotation and processing (The Danish Reseach Council for Culture and Communication 2013-2018)
• The Danish language in the digital age and language technology support for Danish
• The Danish wordnet, DanNet (The Danish Research Council "Yngre Forskere", 2004-2008).
• Computational lexicography and lexical disambiguation

Teaching

• Coordinator and teacher of the elective package 'AI, Programmering og Sprogteknologi'
• Teacher at the bachelor 'Kognitions- og Datavidenskab' ('Sprog og Sprogprocessering')
• Supervision at the MSc 'It & Cognition' within language technology topics in particular semantic processing and language resources

Primary fields of research

• Language technology and generative ai 
• Semantic processing and language resources
• Linguistic ontology/wordnets
• Language policy related to ai

CV

Education and employment:

• Master in Spanish and computational linguistics at University of Copenhagen 1989.
• PhD in computational linguistics University of Copenhagen 1998.
• 1989 - 2004 The EUROTRA Project, University of Copenhagen,
• 1998 - 2004 External lecturer at Copenhagen Business School
• 1999 - 2010 Senior Researcher at Centre for Language Technology, University of Copenhagen
• 2010 Professor in language technology and computational linguistics at Centre for Language Technology, University of Copenhagen
• 2015 - 2017 Head of Department at Department of Nordic Research, University of Copenhagen 
• 2017 -, Deputy Head of Department of Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics
• 2017 -, Centre Leader of Centre for Language Technology at Nordic Studies and Linguistics

Main research areas: language technology, NLP, benchmark data for Danish LT, semantic processing, lexical semantics, linguistic ontologies, language policy wrt language technology.

Research funding, management, supervision etc.

Funding record: 2023: (PI, grant holder). “Compiling a Danish benchmark dataset for assessing reasoning capabilities of large language models”. Carlsberg Foundation. Grant: DKK 804,533. 2020: (Co-PI and grant holder with Karen Skovgaard-Petersen, The Danish Society for Language and Literature, and Thomas Hestbæk Anderssen, The Danish Language Council). “Det Centrale OrdRegiser”. The Agency for Digital Government. Grant: DKK 5,189,970. 2018: (Co-PI and grant holder with Karen Skovgaard-Petersen, The Danish Society for Language and Literature).”Digital udgivelse og sprogteknologisk anvendelse af Den Danske Begrebsordbog – DanNet2”. Carlsberg Foundation. Grant: DKK 1,964,790. 2018: (Partner, National coordinator). ”ELEXIS”, EU-H2020. Grant (to UCPH): DKK 1,686,727. 2013: (Principal Investigator and grant holder). “Semantic Processing across Domains”. The Danish Research Council (DFF-1319-00123). Grant: DKK 5,700,000. 2011: (Partner, National coordinator for Denmark). “MetaNord”. ICT PSP Programme, Grant Agreement: No 270899. Grant (to UCPH): DKK 1,247,197. 2009: (Partner, National coordinator for Denmark). “CLARA”. Initial Training Network in the Marie Curie Actions financed by the EC under FP7. Grant Agreement Number 238405. Grant: EUR 3,613,919. 2004: (PI, grant holder): ”Leksikalsk semantisk ordnet for dansk”. Young Researchers’ Program (now ‘Sapere Aude’), The Danish Research Foundation. Grant: DKK 3,000,000. 2000: (Coordinator and grant holder). ”SPINN - SProgteknologi og INformationssøgning i Norden”. NorFA– Nordisk Forskningsuddannelsesakademi.

Project management of external projects: National coordinator of EU projects: ELEXIS, H2020 (2018-2023)(co-leader), eTranslation TermBank CEF (2017-2019), European Language Equality (2019-2022), European Language Resource Coordination CEF (2018-2022), CLARA - Common Language Resources and their Applications, Marie Curie ITN (2011-2014), META-NORD, EU project (2011-2013), SIMPLE-DK (1998-2000). Coordinator of Nordic network: SPINN-Research Network (2001-2004).

Leader of national, cross-institutional research projects: The Benchmark Project, The Carlsberg Foundation (2024-2026), Det Centrale OrdRegister, The Danish Agency for Digitisation (2021-2023) (co-leader), Semantic Processing across Domains (“Forskningsprojekt 2”) (2013-2017) (Danish Research Council): DanNet – et leksikalsk semantisk ordnet for dansk, “Yngre Forskere” (2005-2008).

Selected scientific committees and reviews: Chair of Sprogteknologisk Konference 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024 with the Danish Agency for Digital Government. Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL), Coling, SEM+, Euralex Congress, Global WordNet Conference,  International Congresses of Language Resources and Evaluation, International Conference on Terminology and Knowledge Engineering, Euralex, eLex, Program Chair for NodaLida 2011, Riga, Latvia. Subject editor for lex.dk (computational linguistics and language technology). Selected review tasks: The EU Commission, Det Norske Forskningsministerium, Islandske Sprogteknologifond, Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, The Velux Foundation, LRE and IJL Journals.  

International boards: Member of the Management Committee of the Cost Action CA21167 - Universality, Diversity and Idiosyncrasy in Language Technology (UniDive) (2024-). Global WordNet Association 2008-2023. President of Northern European Association of Language Technology 2014-2016 (board member 2012-2014), Rikbankens Jubileumsfond’s Program Committee, Sweden, 2018-2021.                                                                                                                                                              

Selected invited talks: ’Om sprogforståelse i danske sprogmodeller’, Digitaliseringsstyrelsen, September 2024. ’Det danske sprog i store sprogmodeller’, Folkteingstidende, September 2024. ’Towards a Semantic Reasoning Benchmark’, Center for Language Generation and AI, Århus. ’Sprog- og kulturbias i LLMs’, The Danish Language Council, May 2024. ‘Sproglige og kulturelle bias i store sprogmodeller’, Faglig Fredag, Lund&Bendsen A/S October 2023. ’Lexical Conceptual Resources in the Era of Neural Language Models’, Lars Borin's Symposium, Språkbanken. November. 2022. ‘The Role of Lexical Conceptual Resources in the Era of Language Models’, Institute for Bulgarian Language November 2022. Lexical-Conceptual Resources in the Era of Neural Language Models:  at CLIB '22: Computational Linguistics in Bulgaria 9 sep. 2022. LexicoNordica 2022 i Falsterbo, Sweden, National AI strategy and LT in Denmark,  at Nordisk Ministerråds Konference om sprogteknologi for små sprog i Norden, Stockholm 2020, METAFORUM 2019, Brussels, Belgium, Applied Linguistics Conference 2019 Tallinn, Estonia, Konference om Leksikografi i Norden 2017, Reykjavik, Iceland, Global Wordnet Conference 2014, Tartu, Estonia, Euralex Conference 2013, Oslo, Norway.

Supervision of more than 20 master theses and of five PhD students.