Our Team
Rasha Abdel Rahman
Group Leader and Principal Investigator
After graduating from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Rasha worked as a postdoc at the Max PIanck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen. She then re-joined her alma mater as a principal investigator. In 2009, she was awarded a Heisenberg professorship and subsequently became full professor of Neurocognitive Psychology at HU Berlin. She investigates the mechanisms underlying language, vision, social and semantic processing and the multifaceted interplay of these core human faculties.
mail: rasha.abdel.rahman at hu-berlin.de
google scholar: click here
ORCiD: click here
Get in touch:
Fedoua Rothländer
Administration Officer
Fedoua is responsible for the administrative work of the group and oversees all office and secretarial management, ensuring smooth daily operations.
mail: fedoua.rothlaender at hu-berlin.de
Guido Kiecker
Lab Engineer
Guido is a true OG member of our lab. He specializes in all technical aspects that keep our EEG labs and offices running perfectly, task programming, positive vibes, and generally knowing stuff. When you’re wondering how on earth to implement that new paradigm in the lab, he’ll help you just do it. Whatever difficulties arise, Guido reliably comes up with a creative solution fast. One of the first things new lab members do, is arrange a meeting with Guido and get a lab introduction. All this has earned him numerous acknowledgments and much praise in the lab’s publications and dissertations.
mail: guido.kiecker at hu-berlin.de
Martin Maier
Postdoctoral Researcher
Martin investigates the ways in which meaning — embedded in language, knowledge, or emotions — shapes human perception and conscious experience. His current project explores the potential of knowledge augmentation in artificial networks, in collaboration with computer vision scientists at the Cluster Science of Intelligence. Martin first came to the lab as a student researcher and joined the Berlin School of Mind and Brain for his PhD studies. His award-winning dissertation revealed influences of language on fundamental aspects of perception.
Anna Eiserbeck
Doctoral Researcher
Anna’s research focuses on the access of visual information to conscious perception and the influences of social-emotional information on visual experience. She investigates these topics using the attentional blink paradigm and event-relates potentials, focusing on faces as a form of complex stimuli with high social significance and meaning. Within a project at the Cluster Science of Intelligence she furthermore works on investigating how humans (emotionally) process input from artificial agents versus humans.
Julia Baum
Postdoctoral Researcher
Julia investigates how emotional gossip and misinformation (“fake news”) affects our perception of people. She uses different methods like behavioural measures, electrophysiological correlates of brain activity (ERPs), eye tracking, and pupillometry to find out how we process social-emotional information and its trustworthiness, and what we can do to protect ourselves against misinformation biasing our perceptions and judgments. Julia joined the lab as a student researcher, did her doctoral studies with the Berlin School of Mind and Brain, and has worked
with the Cluster Science of Intelligence on knowledge-augmented face perception in artificial intelligence.
Kirsten Stark
Doctoral Researcher
Kirsten studies the speech production of lying, i.e., what happens in our brain when we decide to speak/type a lie. To this end, she developed a paradigm to study lying in social browser-based settings and EEG. Kirsten initially joined the lab as an intern. After a research stay at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she studied the role of faces and bodies in emotion recognition, she joined us as a student assistant. During her PhD, she is a fellow of the Einstein Center for Neurosciences and the Berlin School of Mind and Brain.
mail: kirsten.stark at hu-berlin.de
twitter: https://twitter.com/kirstenfstark
Hannah Kaube
Doctoral Researcher
Hannah investigates the impact of affective knowledge on the perception of artworks and cultural artefacts. She is passionate about utilising (neuro)scientific methodology to try and add an empirical perspective to philosophical and/or theoretical discourse. She has been at the lab since her Master’s Thesis and is currently the recipient of a doctoral scholarship from the German Academic Scholarship Foundation (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes).
mail: hannah.kaube at hu-berlin.de
twitter: https://twitter.com/hannahkaube
Zsuzsa Komaromy
Doctoral Researcher
Zsuzsa explores how we process emotional information – and misinformation – and how it shapes our perceptions of others. Focusing on the credibility of the information sources, she uses a combination of neurobiological measures (eg. EEG) and behavioural tasks. After completing her Master’s degree at Utrecht University, she joined the Neurocognitive Psychology Lab at HU Berlin as a doctoral student. Her interests extend beyond person-related information processing to include the topics of polarization, conspiracy theories and cognitive biases.
Clark Lejeune-Monnereau (they/them)
Doctoral Researcher
mail: clara.jeanne.lejeune at student.hu-berlin.de
Alexander (Leo) Leonhardt (he/him)
Doctoral Researcher
Leo comes from a multidisciplinary background. He has studied Philosophy and Cognitive (Neuro-)Science at the University of Sussex and the Berlin School of Mind and Brain. In between, he has worked as a communication designer. These disciplines each influence his work, which investigates how people perceive robots and AI and deals with practical and ethical implications of what we understand about the social interface between humanity and technology.
Felix Baier
Student Assistant
Felix is a bachelor´s student at Humboldt-University of Berlin. He got into neurocognitive Psychology to combine his love for the human and natural sciences. That´s why he joined Science of Intelligence as a student assistant to work on electrophysiological investigations of social intelligence.
Jin Gao
Doctoral Researcher
Jin is interested in the influence of positive emotions on social interactions and decision-making. During her master’s studies, she explored gender differences and the mechanisms of integration in processing facial and vocal attractiveness, employing both ERP and fMRI methodologies. Currently, she is a recipient of a doctoral scholarship from the China Scholarship Council (CSC).
Marisha Herb
Doctoral Researcher
Marisha is working with data from previous experiments on context effects in language production to investigate how different aspects of the words affect their production. She is especially interested in the role of grounded cognition in language production. She joined the lab for her Master’s Thesis and is currently the recipient of a doctoral scholarship from the German Academic Scholarship Foundation (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes) and part of the PhD program at the Berlin School of Mind and Brain.
Mahdieh S. Mirmohammad
Intern
Mahdieh has graduated as a psychologist and is currently a student in the Master program Mind and Brain at Humboldt University of Berlin. She comes from a clinical background and her research interest focuses on how cognitive and affective impairments influence the way human brain perceive, process, and interact with social cues.
Laura Ackermann
Student Assistant
Laura is a Bachelor student of psychology at Humboldt University of Berlin. During her studies she took a great interest in General Psychology and hence decided to join the lab as a student assistant.
mail: laura.elisa.ackermann at student.hu-berlin.de
Roghaye Keshavarzi
Student Assistant
Roghaye is a student assistant and is currently pursuing her second master’s degree at the Berlin School of Mind and Brain and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, after completing her first master’s in psychology. Her research interests include emotion, human–AI interaction, and the mechanisms underlying social behavior.
Dimitra Tsiapou
Doctoral Researcher
Dimitra investigates emotional language production, with a focus on bilingual populations. She uses both behavioural and electrophysiological (EEG) methods. She holds a Bachelor’s in German and French Studies and a Master’s in Linguistics from Humboldt University of Berlin. Her doctorate is supported by the German Academic Scholarship Foundation (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes)..
Our Team
Rasha Abdel Rahman
Group Leader and Principal Investigator
After graduating from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Rasha worked as a postdoc at the Max PIanck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen. She then re-joined her alma mater as a principal investigator. In 2009, she was awarded a Heisenberg professorship and subsequently became full professor of Neurocognitive Psychology at HU Berlin. She investigates the mechanisms underlying language, vision, social and semantic processing and the multifaceted interplay of these core human faculties.
mail: rasha.abdel.rahman at hu-berlin.de
google scholar: click here
ORCiD: click here
Guido Kiecker
Lab Engineer
Guido is a true OG member of our lab. He specializes in all technical aspects that keep our EEG labs and offices running perfectly, task programming, positive vibes, and generally knowing stuff.
When you’re wondering how on earth to implement that new paradigm in the lab, he’ll help you just do it. Whatever difficulties arise, Guido reliably comes up with a creative solution fast. One of the first things new lab members do, is arrange a meeting with Guido and get a lab introduction. All this has earned him numerous acknowledgments and much praise in the lab’s publications and dissertations.
mail: guido.kiecker at hu-berlin.de
Martin Maier
Postdoctoral Researcher
Martin investigates the ways in which meaning — embedded in language, knowledge, or emotions — shapes human perception and conscious experience. His current project explores the potential of knowledge augmentation in artificial networks, in collaboration with computer vision scientists at the Cluster Science of Intelligence. Martin first came to the lab as a student researcher and joined the Berlin School of Mind and Brain for his PhD studies. His award-winning dissertation revealed influences of language on fundamental aspects of perception.
Anna Eiserbeck
Doctoral Researcher
Anna’s research focuses on the access of visual information to conscious perception and the influences of social-emotional information on visual experience. She investigates these topics using the attentional blink paradigm and event-relates potentials, focusing on faces as a form of complex stimuli with high social significance and meaning. Within a project at the Cluster Science of Intelligence she furthermore works on investigating how humans (emotionally) process input from artificial agents versus humans.
Julia Baum
Postdoctoral Researcher
Julia investigates how emotional gossip and misinformation (“fake news”) affects our perception of people. She uses different methods like behavioural measures, electrophysiological correlates of brain activity (ERPs), eye tracking, and pupillometry to find out how we process social-emotional information and its trustworthiness, and what we can do to protect ourselves against misinformation biasing our perceptions and judgments. Julia joined the lab as a student researcher, did her doctoral studies with the Berlin School of Mind and Brain, and has worked
with the Cluster Science of Intelligence on knowledge-augmented face perception in artificial intelligence.
Kirsten Stark
Doctoral Researcher
Kirsten studies the speech production of lying, i.e., what happens in our brain when we decide to speak/type a lie. To this end, she developed a paradigm to study lying in social browser-based settings and EEG. Kirsten initially joined the lab as an intern. After a research stay at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she studied the role of faces and bodies in emotion recognition, she joined us as a student assistant. During her PhD, she is a fellow of the Einstein Center for Neurosciences and the Berlin School of Mind and Brain.
mail: kirsten.stark at hu-berlin.de
twitter: https://twitter.com/kirstenfstark
Hannah Kaube
Doctoral Researcher
Hannah investigates the impact of affective knowledge on the perception of artworks and cultural artefacts. She is passionate about utilising (neuro)scientific methodology to try and add an empirical perspective to philosophical and/or theoretical discourse. She has been at the lab since her Master’s Thesis and is currently the recipient of a doctoral scholarship from the German Academic Scholarship Foundation (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes).
mail: hannah.kaube at hu-berlin.de
twitter: https://twitter.com/hannahkaube
Felix Baier
Student Assistant
Felix is a bachelor´s student at Humboldt-University of Berlin. He got into neurocognitive Psychology to combine his love for the human and natural sciences. That´s why he joined Science of Intelligence as a student assistant to work on electrophysiological investigations of social intelligence.
mail: felixbaierdon at gmail.com
Laura Ackermann
Student Assistant
Laura is a Bachelor student of psychology at Humboldt University of Berlin. During her studies she took a great interest in General Psychology and hence decided to join the lab as a student assistant.
mail: laura.elisa.ackermann at student.hu-berlin.de
Clark Lejeune-Monnereau (they/them)
Doctoral Researcher
mail: clara.jeanne.lejeune at student.hu-berlin.de
Jin Gao
Doctoral Researcher
Jin is interested in the influence of positive emotions on social interactions and decision-making. During her master’s studies, she explored gender differences and the mechanisms of integration in processing facial and vocal attractiveness, employing both ERP and fMRI methodologies. Currently, she is a recipient of a doctoral scholarship from the China Scholarship Council (CSC).
mail: jin.gao at student.hu-berlin.de
Marisha Herb
Doctoral Researcher
Marisha is working with data from previous experiments on context effects in language production to investigate how different aspects of the words affect their production. She is especially interested in the role of grounded cognition in language production. She joined the lab for her Master’s Thesis and is currently the recipient of a doctoral scholarship from the German Academic Scholarship Foundation (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes) and part of the PhD program at the Berlin School of Mind and Brain.
mail: marisha.herb at hu-berlin.de
Alexander (Leo) Leonhardt (he/him)
Doctoral Researcher
Leo comes from a multidisciplinary background. He has studied Philosophy and Cognitive (Neuro-)Science at the University of Sussex and the Berlin School of Mind and Brain. In between, he has worked as a communication designer. These disciplines each influence his work, which investigates how people perceive robots and AI and deals with practical and ethical implications of what we understand about the social interface between humanity and technology.
mail: leonhaal at hu-berlin.de
Mahdieh S. Mirmohammad
Intern
Mahdieh has graduated as a psychologist and is currently a student in the Master program Mind and Brain at Humboldt University of Berlin. She comes from a clinical background and her research interest focuses on how cognitive and affective impairments influence the way human brain perceive, process, and interact with social cues.
Zsuzsa Komaromy
Doctoral Researcher
Zsuzsa explores how we process emotional information – and misinformation – and how it shapes our perceptions of others. Focusing on the credibility of the information sources, she uses a combination of neurobiological measures (eg. EEG) and behavioural tasks. After completing her Master’s degree at Utrecht University, she joined the Neurocognitive Psychology Lab at HU Berlin as a doctoral student. Her interests extend beyond person-related information processing to include the topics of polarization, conspiracy theories and cognitive biases.
mail: zsuzsa.komaromy at hu-berlin.de
Roghaye Keshavarzi
Student Assistant
Roghaye is a student assistant and is currently pursuing her second master’s degree at the Berlin School of Mind and Brain and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, after completing her first master’s in psychology. Her research interests include emotion, human–AI interaction, and the mechanisms underlying social behavior.
Dimitra Tsiapou
Doctoral Researcher
Dimitra investigates emotional language production, with a focus on bilingual populations. She uses both behavioural and electrophysiological (EEG) methods. She holds a Bachelor’s in German and French Studies and a Master’s in Linguistics from Humboldt University of Berlin. Her doctorate is supported by the German Academic Scholarship Foundation (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes).
Alumni and Collaborators
Antje Lorenz
Antje’s research focuses on language production in adults with and without language impairment (aphasia). Currently, she is working in a DFG-funded project on social robotics and communication, which belongs to the Cluster Science of Intelligence. In her recent DFG-funded project she investigated the roles of healthy aging and language proficiency in compound production. In additional projects, she explored the representation of plural nouns in different languages. She is currently in the habilitation process at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (professional teaching qualification for Psychology).
Anna Kuhlen
Anna Kuhlen’s research focuses on how cognitive processes are adapted to the social context in which they take place. In particular, Anna Kuhlen is interested in the cognitive and neural architecture that supports language production in social interaction; including how the processes involved in speaking are shaped by knowledge about the interaction partner. Anna Kuhlen worked from 2015 to 2022 as scientific staff member in research and teaching in our group. Since 2022 Anna Kuhlen holds a professorship for Biological Psychology and Social Psychology at RWTH University Aachen.
Romy Frömer
Romy Frömer completed her undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral training at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Working with Werner Sommer, her dissertation research examined mechanisms of cognitive control in the motor domain. After receiving her PhD, Romy performed postdoctoral research with Rasha Abdel Rahman, focusing on the role of predictions and uncertainty in perception. Her research also explores the intersection of metacognition (error monitoring and confidence) and feedback-based learning in the motor domain.
Website: click here
Adil Ishag
Adil is a postdoctoral fellow supported by Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. He is interested in Psycholinguistics, Bilingualism and Second Language Acquisition. His current research project investigates the cognitive processing of grammatical gender in Arabic – German bilinguals. Prior to joining the lab, Adil was a staff member at International University of Africa, in Sudan.
Milena Rabovsky
Milena Rabovsky did her PhD at the Berlin School of Mind and Brain (Germany). After research stays at the University of Western Ontario (Canada), Stanford University (USA) and Freie Universität Berlin (Germany), she started as principal investigator and tenure track professor at the University of Potsdam. Her research investigates how language processing works in the brain, using neuroscientific evidence and computational modelling.
Website: click here
Alissa Melinger
Alissa is a graduate of the Department of Linguistics and the Center for Cognitive Science at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York. Alissa held post-doctoral positions at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in the Netherlands and at Saarland University in Germany. In 2006, Alissa joined the School of Psychology at the University of Dundee where she is a Reader in Psychology. Alissa’s research combines linguistic theory, psychological models, and experimental methodology into a line of research that investigates what speakers know about words. Together with Rasha Abdel Rahman, Alissa developed a multiple word variant of picture-word interference paradigm to investigate the relationships between different types of distractor effects.
Website: click here
Olga Wudarczyk-Markett
Olga is the Professor of Psychology at the IU International University of Applied Sciences. Her research focuses on multimodal communication in human-robot interactions using behavioural and neurophysiological approaches. She holds a PhD from RWTH Aachen University, an MSc in Psychological Research from the University of Oxford, and an MA in Psychology from the University of Edinburgh.
Anne Vogt
Anne is very fascinated about the human capacity of language and speaking and she is particularly interested in whether the rich experiences we make in our everyday lives influence how we speak and which words we chose when speaking. With a strong background in embodied language processing Anne joined the lab and the Berlin School of Mind and Brain after studying linguistics and psychology in Tübingen. She now combines embodied cognition with language production research using classic paradigms like picture naming tasks as well as more unconstrained contexts to elicit speech. Furthermore, she is very active in moving language production experiments online to be able to test more diverse samples in the future.
Alumni and collaborators
Antje Lorenz
Antje’s research focuses on language production in adults with and without language impairment (aphasia). Currently, she is working in a DFG-funded project on social robotics and communication, which belongs to the Cluster Science of Intelligence. In her recent DFG-funded project she investigated the roles of healthy aging and language proficiency in compound production. In additional projects, she explored the representation of plural nouns in different languages. In 2023, she was awarded the habilitation degree at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (professional teaching qualification for Psychology). She currently holds a Visiting Professorship for Molecular Psychology.
Anna Kuhlen
Anna Kuhlen’s research focuses on how cognitive processes are adapted to the social context in which they take place. In particular, Anna Kuhlen is interested in the cognitive and neural architecture that supports language production in social interaction; including how the processes involved in speaking are shaped by knowledge about the interaction partner. Anna Kuhlen worked from 2015 to 2022 as scientific staff member in research and teaching in our group. Since 2022 Anna Kuhlen holds a professorship for Biological Psychology and Social Psychology at RWTH University Aachen.
Romy Frömer
Romy Frömer completed her undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral training at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Working with Werner Sommer, her dissertation research examined mechanisms of cognitive control in the motor domain. After receiving her PhD, Romy performed postdoctoral research with Rasha Abdel Rahman, focusing on the role of predictions and uncertainty in perception. Her research also explores the intersection of metacognition (error monitoring and confidence) and feedback-based learning in the motor domain.
Website: click here
Adil Ishag
Adil is a postdoctoral fellow supported by Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. He is interested in Psycholinguistics, Bilingualism and Second Language Acquisition. His current research project investigates the cognitive processing of grammatical gender in Arabic – German bilinguals. Prior to joining the lab, Adil was a staff member at International University of Africa, in Sudan.
Milena Rabovsky
Milena Rabovsky did her PhD at the Berlin School of Mind and Brain (Germany). After research stays at the University of Western Ontario (Canada), Stanford University (USA) and Freie Universität Berlin (Germany), she started as principal investigator and tenure track professor at the University of Potsdam. Her research investigates how language processing works in the brain, using neuroscientific evidence and computational modelling.
Website: click here
Alissa Melinger
Alissa is a graduate of the Department of Linguistics and the Center for Cognitive Science at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York. Alissa held post-doctoral positions at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in the Netherlands and at Saarland University in Germany. In 2006, Alissa joined the School of Psychology at the University of Dundee where she is a Reader in Psychology. Alissa’s research combines linguistic theory, psychological models, and experimental methodology into a line of research that investigates what speakers know about words. Together with Rasha Abdel Rahman, Alissa developed a multiple word variant of picture-word interference paradigm to investigate the relationships between different types of distractor effects.
Website: click here
Olga Wudarczyk-Markett
Olga is the Professor of Psychology at the IU International University of Applied Sciences. Her research focuses on multimodal communication in human-robot interactions using behavioural and neurophysiological approaches. She holds a PhD from RWTH Aachen University, an MSc in Psychological Research from the University of Oxford, and an MA in Psychology from the University of Edinburgh.
Anne Vogt
Anne studied linguistics and psychology and combined both fields during her PhD at HU Berlin and Berlin School of Mind and Brain because she is very fascinated about the human capacity of language and speaking. She combined embodied cognition with language production research using classic paradigms like picture naming tasks as well as more unconstrained contexts to elicit speech. She loved to supervise students and is very interested in people’s personal development. Therefore, she moved on to a position outside of academia in Human Ressources.