Curriculum Vitae

last updated: March 11, 2009

Full-time Research and Professional Experience

• since November 2008
  Director of Ontological Semantics, RiverGlass Inc., Champaign, Illinois
  Leader of the research and development team for ontological semantics. 
• October 2006 - October 2008
  Chief Scientific Officer, hakia Inc., New York, New York (Staff Scientist, August-September 2006)
  Supervision and implementation of all natural language aspects for search engine development and operation, in particular computational ontological semantics; recruitment, training, and supervision of international teams for various languages.
• August 2005 – July 2006
  Assistant Professor (tenure-track) of Linguistics in the Department of Writing and Linguistics of Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, Georgia
• July 2004 – July 2005
  Postdoctoral Researcher in the Coh-Metrix project at the Institute for Intelligent Systems of the University of Memphis, Memphis, Tennessee
• Aug. 2000 – Aug. 2003
  Graduate Research Assistant in various NLP projects at the Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS) at Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, member of various research groups and supervisor of undergraduate and graduate researchers 
• Aug. 2000 – Aug. 2003
  Graduate Teaching Assistant in the English Department of Purdue University: taught introductory composition and linguistics courses 
• Aug. 1998 - June 2000
  Graduate Teaching and Research Assistant in the English Department of Youngstown State University, Youngstown, Ohio: taught introductory composition and linguistics courses; created the camera-ready copy for Brown, Steven and Salvatore Attardo. Understanding Language - Structure, Interaction, and Variation. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P. 2000.
• Aug. 1991 - Aug. 1998
  Editor, Translator, and IT Supervisor for the international quarterly Textileforum published by Textilwerkstatt-Verlag, European Textile Network, Hannover, Germany 

Education

• Ph.D. in Linguistics
  2003, Interdepartmental Program in Linguistics at Purdue University. 
• Dissertation “Paronomasic Puns: Target Recoverability towards Automatic Generation”
• Dissertation committee: Victor Raskin (chair), Salvatore Attardo, Shaun Hughes, Mary Niepokuj, Sergei Nirenburg
• Primary area: computational linguistics (ontological semantics, NLP for information security); secondary areas: linguistic humor studies, theoretical linguistics, and historical linguistics
• M.A. in English
  2000, specialization in TESOL, Youngstown State University. Thesis: “Incongruity and Resolution of Humorous Narratives-Linguistic Humor Theory and the Medieval Bawdry of Rabelais, Boccaccio, and Chaucer” supervised by Salvatore Attardo 
• M.A. in English Linguistics, secondary area Religious Studies
  1998, [Magister Artium der Englischen Sprachwissenschaft, Zweitfach Religionswissenschaft; includes and supercedes the bachelor degree], Universität Hannover, additional areas: Mathematics, German literature, Thesis: “Linguistic Approaches to Humor: The General Theory of Verbal Humor in Performance” supervised by Rainer Schulze 
• Abitur
  1991, [a degree above high school, with 2 years of specialization] major in mathematics, Ancient Greek, and German literature, Kaiser-Wilhelms-Gymnasium, Hannover, Germany

Further Research and Professional Experience

• May 2006 – July 2006
  Visiting Researcher for a project on “The Lexical Field ‘Humor’: Wortfeld, Micro-Ontology, and Psychological Reality” at the Institute for Personality and Assessment at the Department of Psychology of the University of Zurich, Switzerland
• May 2005-July 2006
  Supervisor for Massive Ontological Semantics Acquisition Development, hakia Inc., New York, and Moscow State Lomonosov University, Moscow, Russian Federation
• Feb. 2005 – July 2006
  Senior Consultant for Ontological Semantics for hakia Inc., New York
• May 2005
  Co-Director of the Lexical Acquisition School, Moscow State Lomonosov University, Moscow, Russian Federation
• Oct. 2003 – Mar. 2004
  Consultant for NLP projects at the Institute for Language and Information Technologies (ILIT) of the University of Maryland Baltimore County, Baltimore, Maryland
• Nov. 1997 - Mar. 1998
  created the print-ready copy for Schulze, Rainer. ed. Making Meaningful Choices in English. Tübingen: Narr. 1998. 
• July 1995 - Sept. 1995
  internship at the University of Central England in Birmingham, United Kingdom 
• since 1995
  Freelance Translator (German-English, English-German) for business and academic purposes; special areas: linguistics, psychology, movie scripts and postproduction, textile culture and history, biochemistry, automotive mechanics, military history, materials science

Teaching Experience

• Computational Linguistics
  Georgia Southern, Spring 2006; undergraduate linguistics course
• Semantics
  Georgia Southern, Spring 2006; undergraduate linguistics course
• Composition I
  Georgia Southern, Fall 2005; YSU, Fall 1998 to Spring 1999; Purdue, Fall 2000 
• Introduction to Natural Language Processing
  Fall 2004, University of Memphis; graduate course, supplementary teaching for Vasile Rus
• Introduction to Linguistics
  YSU, Spring 1999 to Fall 2000; undergraduate linguistics course 
• Elements of Linguistics
  Purdue, Fall 2002; introductory undergraduate linguistics course 
• Composition II
  Georgia Southern, Spring 2006; Purdue, Spring 2001
• Introduction to Linguistics
  Purdue, Fall 2001, Summer 2003; graduate course, supplementary teaching for Victor Raskin 
• Ontological Semantics
  Purdue, Fall 2001; graduate course, supplementary teaching for Victor Raskin 

Academic and University Service 

• since 2009
  Editorial Board Member of the International Journal on Advances in Intelligent Systems
• since 2007
  Reviewer for CogSci, Cognitive Science Society Annual Meeting
• since 2005
  Program Committee Member of the Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society (FLAIRS) general conference and special tracks
• since 2005
  Consulting Editor for HUMOR - International Journal of Humor Research
• since 2005
  Referee for Discourse Processes
• 2009
  Program Committee Member of the International Multiconference on Computer Science and Information Technology, October 2009, Mrągowo, Poland
• 2009
  Member of the dissertation committee of William Eyre, Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana
• 2007 — 2008
  External member of the dissertation committee of Andrea Samson, Department of Psychology, University of Fribourg, Switzerland
• 2006
  Co-organizer with Philip M. McCarthy of the special track “Applied Natural Language Processing” and General Program Committee Member at the 2007 20th International FLAIRS (Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society) Conference, Key West, Florida
• April 2006
  Reviewer for the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
• 2005/2006
  Organizer of two Symposia on Cartoon Humor Research at the Youngstown and Copenhagen conferences of the International Society for Humor Studies. With Andrea Samson
• 2005/2006
  Member of the Technology, Teaching & Writing Committee, Dept. of Writing and Linguistics, Georgia Southern
• 2005/2006
  Georgia Southern Linguistics Circle Sponsor
• 2000 – 2004
  Referee for HUMOR - International Journal of Humor Research 
• 2001 – 2004
  External member of the dissertation committee of Michele Sala, Università degli Studi di Bergamo, Italy
• Apr. 2005
  Juror for the Foreign Language Festival, University of Memphis
• Aug. 2000 – Aug. 2003
  Member of the Computers and Composition Committee, Purdue
  Macintosh Tutorials and Resource Collections 
• Aug. 2002 – Aug. 2003
  Secretary of the Purdue Linguistics Association (PLA) 
• Oct. 2000 – Aug. 2002
  Founding President of the Purdue Linguistics Association (PLA) 
• July 2002
  Reviewer for the U.S. Civilian Research & Development Foundation for the Independent States of the Former Soviet Union (CRDF) 
• 1999 – 2000
  Graduate Student Delegate to the English Department, YSU 
• 2000
  German Tutor in the Foreign Language Department, YSU 

Membership in Professional Societies

• Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL)
• Cognitive Science Society (CSS)
• International Society for Humor Studies (ISHS)
• Modern Language Association (MLA) 
• Erdös number: 3 (Erdös—Wagstaff—Atallah—Hempelmann)

Publications

• Edited Proceedings 
• Christian F. Hempelmann and Victor Raskin. 2007. Eds. Proceedings of the New Security Paradigms Workshop, Schloss Dagstuhl, Germany, 2006. New York: ACM Press.
• Christian F. Hempelmann and Victor Raskin. 2006. Eds. Proceedings of the New Security Paradigms Workshop, Lake Arrowhead, California, 2005. New York: ACM Press.
• Christian F. Hempelmann and Victor Raskin. 2005. Eds. Proceedings of the New Security Paradigms Workshop, Nova Scotia, Canada, 2004. New York: ACM Press.
• Christian F. Hempelmann and Victor Raskin. 2004. Eds. Proceedings of the New Security Paradigms Workshop, Ascona, Switzerland, 2003. New York: ACM Press.
• Victor Raskin and Christian F. Hempelmann. 2003. Eds. Proceedings of the New Security Paradigms Workshop, Virginia Beach, Virginia, 2002. New York: ACM Press.
• Victor Raskin and Christian F. Hempelmann.  2002. Eds. Proceedings of the New Security Paradigms Workshop, Cloudcroft, New Mexico, 2001. New York: ACM Press.
• Articles
• Journal Papers
• Nancy Bell, Scott C. Crossley, and Christian F. Hempelmann. "Word Play in Church Marquees." In preparation.
• Philip M. McCarthy, David Dufty, Christian F. Hempelmann, Danielle S. McNamara, and Arthur C. Graesser. “Newness and Givenness of Information: Automated Identification in Written Discourse.” In submission.
• Christian F. Hempelmann and Salvatore Attardo. “Resolutions and Their Incongruities: Further Thoughts on Logical Mechanisms.” HUMOR – International Journal of Humor Research. In press. 
• Andrea C. Samson, Christian F. Hempelmann, Oswald Huber, and Stefan Zysset. 2009. "Neural substrates of Incongruity-Resolution and Nonsense Humor." Neuropsychologia 47: 1023-1033.
• René Proyer, Christian F. Hempelmann, and Willibald Ruch. 2009. "They're All Gonna Laugh at You! Or are They? Are Gelotophobes Actually Laughed at?" HUMOR – International Journal of Humor Research. 22-2: 213-232.
• Christian F. Hempelmann. 2008. “Recent Developments in Linguistic Humor Theory.” HUMOR – International Journal of Humor Research. 21-4: 453-471.
• Christian F. Hempelmann. 2007. “The Epic Tanganyika Laughter Epidemic Revisited.” HUMOR – International Journal of Humor Research. 20-1: 49-71. [article is second most accessed for this journal]
• Christian F. Hempelmann, Vasile Rus, Arthur C. Graesser, and Danielle S. McNamara. 2006. “Evaluating State-of-the-Art Treebank-style Parsers for Coh-Metrix and Other Learning Technology Environments.” Natural Language Engineering 12-2: 131-144.
• Vasile Rus and Christian F. Hempelmann. 2005. “Across-Genres and Empirical Evaluation of State-of-the-Art Treebank-style Parsers.” Archives of Control Sciences 15-4.
• Christian F. Hempelmann and Willibald Ruch. 2005. “3WD Meets GTVH: Psychology and Linguistics Break the Ground for Interdisciplinary Humor Research.” HUMOR – International Journal of Humor Research 18-4: 353-387.
• Christian F. Hempelmann. 2004. “Script Oppositeness and Logical Mechanism in Punning.” HUMOR – International Journal of Humor Research. 17-4: 381-392.
• Christian F. Hempelmann. 2003. “ ‘99 nuns giggle, 1 nun gasps:’ The not-all-that-Christian Natural Class of Christian Jokes.” HUMOR - International Journal of Humor Research. 16-1: 1-31.
• Salvatore Attardo, Christian F. Hempelmann, Sara Di Maio. 2003. “Script oppositions and logical mechanisms: Modeling incongruities and their resolutions.” HUMOR - International Journal of Humor Research 15-1: 3-46.
• Book Chapters
• Christian F. Hempelmann and Ursula Beermann. 2009. "Vielfalt und Einfalt im Humor amerikanischer Studierender: Lehre, zentrale Themen und Anwendung in künstlicher Intelligenz. [Multiplicity and Simplicity in the Humor of American Students: Teaching, Central Themes, and Artificial Intelligence.]" In: Block, Friedrich. Ed. Der Wandel des Komischen. Kulturen des Komischen, Vol. 5. Bielefeld: Aisthesis. In press.
• Christian F. Hempelmann. 2008. “Computational Humor: Beyond the Pun?” In: Raskin, Victor. Ed. The Primer of Humor Research. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter: 335-363.
• Christian F. Hempelmann and Andrea C. Samson. 2008. “Cartoons: Drawn Jokes?” In: Raskin, Victor. Ed. The Primer of Humor Research. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter: 613-644.
• Christian F. Hempelmann and Andrea C. Samson. 2007. “Visual Puns and Verbal Puns: Descriptive Analogy or False Analogy?” In: Popa, Diana and Salvatore Attardo. Eds. New Approaches to the Linguistics of Humor.” Galati: Editura Academica: 180-196.
• Proceedings
• Christian F. Hempelmann and Victor Raskin. "hakia: Doing Semantic Search Semantically." Proceedings fo the 2nd Annual European Semantic Technology Conference. Vienna, Austria. September 24-16, 2008.
• Victor Raskin, Christian F. Hempelmann, Katrina E. Triezenberg, Brian Buck, and Arthur Keen. "Accessing and Manipulating Meaning of Textual and Data Information for Information Assurance and Security and Intelligence Information." In: Proceedings of the Cyber Security and Information Intelligence Research Workshop, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee. May 12-14, 2008.
• Christian F. Hempelmann. "Semantic Search: Content vs. Formalism." Proceedings of LangTech 2008, 28-29 February. Rome, Italy: Fondazione Ugo Bordoni. Available at: http://www.langtech.it/en/technical_program/fp/32_Hempelmann.pdf
• Christian F. Hempelmann. Victor Raskin, Riza C. Berkan, and Katrina E. Triezenberg. "Ontological-Semantic Internet Search." In: Sahlgren, Magnus and Ola Knutsson. Eds. Proceedings of the Workshop Semantic Content Acquisition and Representation (SCAR) 2007. SICS Technical Report T2007-06. Swedish Institute of Computer Science, Stockholm, Sweden. ISSN 1100-3154: 35.
• Christian F. Hempelmann. “Beyond Proof-of-Concept: Implementing Ontological Semantics as a Commercial Product.” In: Raskin, Victor and John Spartz. Eds. Proceedings of the 4th Midwest Computational Linguistics Colloquium 2007. Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana. April 28, 2007.
• Christian F. Hempelmann, Katrina E. Triezenberg, Chris Gates, Victor Raskin, and Riza C. Berkan. “Multiword Expressions in Ontological-Semantic Lexicons.” In: Raskin, Victor and John Spartz. Eds. Proceedings of the 4th Midwest Computational Linguistics Colloquium 2007. Purdue University. West Lafayette, Indiana, April 28, 2007.
• Christian F. Hempelmann, Victor Raskin and Katrina E. Triezenberg. “Computer, Tell Me a Joke ... but Please Make it Funny: Computational Humor with Ontological Semantics.” In: Russell, Ingrid and Zdravko Markov. Eds. Proceedings of the 18th International Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society. Menlo Park, CA: AAAI Press. 2006: 746-751.
• Christian F. Hempelmann, David Dufty, Philip M. McCarthy, Arthur C. Graesser, Zhiquiang Cai, and Danielle S. McNamara.“Using LSA to Automatically Identify Givenness and Newness of Noun Phrases in Written Discourse.” Proceedings of the XXVII Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. Stresa, Italy. 2005: 941-949.
• David Dufty, Christian F. Hempelmann, Arthur C. Graesser, Zhiquiang Cai, and Danielle S. McNamara. “An Algorithm for Detecting Causal and Intentional Information in Text.” Proceedings of the 15th Annual Meeting of the Society for Text and Discourse. Amsterdam, The Netherlands. 2005.
• Christian F. Hempelmann, Vasile Rus, Arthur C. Graesser, and Danielle S. McNamara. “Evaluating State-of-the-Art Treebank-style Parsers for Coh-Metrix and Other Learning Technology Environments.” Proceedings of the Second Workshop on Building Educational Applications Using Natural Language Processing and Computational Linguistics at the ACL conference 2005. Ann Arbor, MI: 69-76.
• Christian F. Hempelmann, Julija Televnaja, Krista Bennett, and Katrina E. Triezenberg. “Semantic Representation of English Phrasal Verbs.” In: Klopotek, Mieczyslaw A., Slawomir T. Wierzchon, and Krzysztof Trojanowski. Eds. Intelligent Information Processing and Web Mining. Proceedings of the International IIS: IIPWM´04 Conference, Zakopane, Poland. Berlin: Springer. 2004.
• Christian F. Hempelmann. “An Ynperfect Pun Selector for Computational Humor.” In: Cavar, Damir and Paul Rodriguez. Eds. Proceedings of the First Annual Midwest Colloquium in Computational Linguistics. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University. 2004.
• Christian F. Hempelmann, Victor Raskin, and Katrina E. Triezenberg. “Semantic Forensics: NLP Systems for Deception Detection.” In: Cavar, Damir and Paul Rodriguez. Eds. Proceedings of the First Annual Midwest Colloquium in Computational Linguistics. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University. 2004.
• Victor Raskin, Christian F. Hempelmann, Krista Bennett, Katrina E. Triezenberg, Evguenia Malaya, and Dina Mohamed. “The Purdue Ontological Semantics Project.” In: Cavar, Damir and Paul Rodriguez. Eds. Proceedings of the First Annual Midwest Colloquium in Computational Linguistics. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University. 2004.
• Victor Raskin, Christian F. Hempelmann, and Katrina E. Triezenberg. “Semantic Forensics: An Application of Ontological Semantics to Information Assurance.” Proceedings of the Second Workshop on Text Meaning and Interpretation at the ACL conference. Barcelona: ACL. 2004: 105-112.
• Victor Raskin, Sergei Nirenburg, Christian F. Hempelmann, Inna Nirenburg, and Katrina E. Triezenberg. "The Genesis of a Script for Bankruptcy in Ontological Semantics." Proceedings of  HLT-NAACL 2003. Edmonton, Canada. New York: ACM. 2003. 30-37.
• Mikhail J. Atallah, Victor Raskin, Christian F. Hempelmann, Mercan Karahan, Radu Sion, Umut Topkara, and Katrina E. Triezenberg. “Natural Language Watermarking and Tamperproofing.” In: Petitcolas, Fabien A. P.. Ed. Information Hiding, 5th International Workshop, IH 2002. Berlin: Springer. 2002: 196-210. 
• Victor Raskin, Sergei Nirenburg, Mikhail J. Atallah, Christian F. Hempelmann, and Katrina E. Triezenberg. “Why NLP Should Move into IAS.” In: Krauwer, Steven (on behalf of ELSNET). Ed. Proceedings of the Workshop on a Roadmap for Computational Linguistics at COLING 2002. Utrecht: ELSNET. 2002: 1-7.
• Victor Raskin, Christian F. Hempelmann, Katrina E. Triezenberg, and Sergei Nirenburg. “Ontology in Information Security: A Useful Theoretical Foundation and Methodological Tool.” In: Raskin, Victor and Christian F. Hempelmann. Eds. Proceedings of the New Security Paradigms Workshop 2001. New York: ACM. 2002: 53-59.
• Mikhail J. Atallah, Victor Raskin, Michael Crogan, Christian F. Hempelmann, Florian Kerschbaum, Dina Mohamed, and Sanket Naik. “Natural Language Watermarking: Design, Analysis, and a Proof-of-concept Implementation.” In: Moskowitz, Ira S. Ed. Information Hiding. Proceedings of the Fourth International Workshop IH 2001. Berlin: Springer. 2001: 185-199. 
• Book Reviews 
• Christian F. Hempelmann. "Eckart Schörle. 2007. Die Verhöflichung des Lachens. Lachgeschichte im 18. Jhd. [Making Laughter Courteous. A History of Laughter in the 18th Century.] Bielefeld: Aisthesis." HUMOR – International Journal of Humor Research. forthcoming.
• Christian F. Hempelmann. “Belem Santana López. 2006. Wie wird das Komische übersetzt? [How is Humor Translated?] Berlin: Frank & Timme.” HUMOR – International Journal of Humor Research. forthcoming.
• Christian F. Hempelmann and Willibald Ruch. “Ralph Müller: Theorie der Pointe. [Theory of the Pointe.] Paderborn: Mentis. 2003.” HUMOR – International Journal of Humor Research 18-1. 2005.
• Christian F. Hempelmann. “Phillip Glenn: Laughter in Interaction. Cambridge: CUP. 2003.” linguistlist.org 15-1438. 2004.
• Christian F. Hempelmann. “Uwe Wirth: Diskursive Dummheit: Abduktion und Komik als Grenzphänomene des Verstehens. [Stupidity in Discourse: Abduction and Humor as Fringe Phenomena of Understanding.] Heidelberg: Winter. 1999.” HUMOR - International Journal of Humor Research 16-3. 2003: 331-37.
• Technical Reports
• Christian F. Hempelmann and Katrina E. Triezenberg. "Methodology of Ontological Semantic Acquisition. A Tutorial Set for the Massive Ontological Semantic Acquisition Development." Moscow: Lomonosov University, 2005. TR 2005-101, a Technical Report, Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS), Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN.
• Christian F. Hempelmann and Vasile Rus. “Implementing Anaphora Resolution in Coh-Metrix.” Technical Report.  Institute for Intelligent Systems, University of Memphis. 2005.
• David Dufty, Christian F. Hempelmann, Arthur C. Graesser and Danielle S. McNamara. “Automatic assessment of causal and intentional cohesion in Coh-Metrix.” With Technical Report, Institute for Intelligent Systems, University of Memphis. 2005.
• Scott Crossley, Christian F. Hempelmann, Arthur C. Graesser, Max M. Louwerse, and Danielle S. McNamara. “Automatic assessment of temporal cohesion in Coh-Metrix.” Technical Report, Institute for Intelligent Systems, University of Memphis. 2005.
• Victor Raskin, Mikhail Atallah, and Christian F. Hempelmann. “Developing an Automatic Hybrid Data and Text System for Downgrading Sensitive Documents.” Technical Report. Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS), Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN. 2000.

Presentations

• Conference Presentations 
• "Accessing and Manipulating Meaning of Textual and Data Information for Information Assurance and Security and Intelligence Information." With Victor Raskin, Katrina E. Triezenberg, Brian Buck, and Arthur Keen. Paper at the Cyber Security and Information Intelligence Research Workshop, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee. May 12-14, 2008.
• "Laughter in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Einer flog über das Kuckucksnest." Poster at the 10th Congress of the Swiss Society for Psychology, University of Zurich, Swizerland. September 13-14. 2007.
• "Functional and 'Dysfunctional' Nouns in Ontological Semantics." With Victor Raskin. Concept Types and Frames in Language, Cognition, and Science, Universität Düsseldorf, Germany. August 20-22, 2007.
• "What Freshmen Laugh About. Frequent Themes in College Humor." With Ursula Beermann. 2007 Conference of the International Society for Humor Studies, Salve Regina University, Newport, RI. June 28 - July 1, 2007.
• "Visual Puns and Verbal Puns. Descriptive Analogy or False Analogy?" With Andrea Samson. 2007 Conference of the International Society for Humor Studies, Salve Regina University, Newport, RI. June 28 - July 1, 2007.
• "Ontological-Semantic Internet Search." Semantic Content Acquisition and Representation (SCAR) 2007. Workshop at NODALIDA 2007. Tallinn, Estonia. May 24, 2007.
• “Multiword Expressions in Ontological-Semantic Lexicons.” With Katrina E. Triezenberg, Chris Gates, Victor Raskin, and Riza C. Berkan. 4th Midwest Computational Linguistics Colloquium 2007, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana. April 28, 2007.
• “Cartoons Again: Cognition, Aesthetics, Content.” With Andrea Samson. Symposium organized at the 2006 Conference of the International Society for Humor Studies, Denmark’s Pedagogical University, Copenhagen, Denmark. July 3-7, 2006.
• “Wordplay in Church Marquees.” With Scott C. Crossley. Paper at the 2006 Conference of the International Society for Humor Studies, Denmark’s Pedagogical University, Copenhagen, Denmark. July 3-7, 2006.
• “The Lexical Field of Laughing in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” With Willibald Ruch. Round table contribution at the 2006 Conference of the International Society for Humor Studies, Denmark’s Pedagogical University, Copenhagen, Denmark. July 3-7, 2006.
• “Introduction to Cartoon Research.” With Andrea Samson. Paper at the 2006 Conference of the International Society for Humor Studies, Denmark’s Pedagogical University, Copenhagen, Denmark. July 3-7, 2006.
• “The Whys and Hows of Ontological Semantics.” With Victor Raskin. Paper at the DIALOG 2006 Conference, Moscow, Russian Federation. May 31 – June 4, 2006. 
• “Computer, Tell Me a Joke ... but Please Make it Funny: Computational Humor with Ontological Semantics.” With Victor Raskin and Katrina E. Triezenberg. Paper at the 19th International FLAIRS (Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society) Conference, Melbourne Beach, Florida. May 11-13, 2006
• “Using LSA to Automatically Identify Givenness and Newness of Noun Phrases in Written Discourse.” With David Dufty, Philip M. McCarthy, Arthur C. Graesser, Zhiquiang Cai, and Danielle S. McNamara. Poster at the XXVII Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Stresa, Italy. July 21-23, 2005.
• “An Algorithm for Detecting Causal and Intentional Information in Text.” With David F. Dufty, Arthur C. Graesser, Zhiqiang Cai, and Danielle S. McNamara. Poster at the 15th Annual Meeting of the Society for Text and Discourse, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. July 6 – 9, 2005.
• “Evaluating State-of-the-Art Treebank-style Parsers for Coh-Metrix and Other Learning Technology Environments.” With Vasile Rus, Arthur C. Graesser, and Danielle S. McNamara. Paper at the Second Workshop on Building Educational Applications Using Natural Language Processing and Computational Linguistics at the ACL conference 2005. Ann Arbor, MI. June 25-30, 2005.
• “Cartoons: Formal and Cognitive Differences to Verbal Humor.” With Andrea Samson. Paper at the 2005 Conference of the International Society for Humor Studies, Youngstown State University, Youngstown, OH, June 13-18, 2005.
• “Across-Genres and Empirical Evaluation of State-of-the-Art Treebank-style Parsers.” With Vasile Rus. Paper at the 2nd Language and Technology Conference: Human Language Technologies as a Challenge for Computer Science and Linguistics. Poznan, Poland. April 21 – 23, 2005.
• “Semantic Forensics: An Application of Ontological Semantics to Information Assurance.” With Victor Raskin and Katrina E. Triezenberg. Paper at the ACL 2004 Workshop on Text Meaning and Interpretation, Barcelona, Spain. July 26, 2004.
• “An Ynperfect Pun Selector for Computational Humor.” Paper at the Midwest Computational Linguistics Colloquium, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA, June 25 – 26, 2004.
• “Semantic Forensics.” With Victor Raskin and Katrina E. Triezenberg. Paper at the Midwest Computational Linguistics Colloquium, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA, June 25 – 26, 2004.
• “Semantic Representation of English Phrasal Verbs.” With Julija Televnaja, Krista Bennett, and Katrina E. Triezenberg. Paper at the Intelligent Information Systems 2004 Conference, Zakopane, Poland. May 17-20, 2004.
• “YPS-The Ynperfect Pun Selector for Computational Humor.” Paper at the 2003 Conference of the International Society for Humor Studies, Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago, IL. July 8-10, 2003.
• “The Genesis of a Script for Bankruptcy in Ontological Semantics.” With Victor Raskin, Sergei Nirenburg, Inna Nirenburg, and Katrina E. Triezenberg. Paper at the Text Meaning Workshop of the HLT-NAACL 2003 Human Language Technology Conference, Edmonton, Canada. May 31, 2003.
• “YPS-The Ynperfect Pun Selector for Computational Humor.” Paper at the Computer-Human-Interface Conference 2003 of the Association for Computing Machinery, Ft. Lauderdale, FL. April 6, 2003.
• “Permissible Distance and Recoverability in Paronomasic Puns.” Paper at the 2002 Conference of the International Society for Humor Studies, University of Bologna, Bertinoro, Italy. July 5, 2002.
• “ ‘99 nuns giggle, 1 nun gasps:’ The not-all-that-Christian Natural Class of Christian Jokes.” Paper at the 2001 Conference of the International Society for Humor Studies in College Park, MD. July 7, 2001.
• “Developing an Automatic Hybrid Data and Text System for Downgrading Sensitive Documents.” With Victor Raskin, Mikhail Atallah and Dina Mohamed. Poster at the Second Annual Research Symposium of the Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS) , Purdue University,West Lafayette, IN. April 26, 2001.
• “Watermarking of Natural Language Text.” With Victor Raskin, Mikhail Atallah, Florian Kerschbaum, Sanket Naik, Michael Crogan, and Dina Mohamed. Poster at the Second Annual Research Symposium of the Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS) , Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN. April 26, 2001.
• “The Joking Monk: Humor and Narrative Structure in Rabelais’ Gargantua.” Paper at the 1999 Conference of the International Society for Humor Studies, Holy Names College, Oakland, CA. July 2, 1999.
• Invited Presentations 
• "Liberal Arts Influentials Lecture." Influential Liberal Arts alumni talk to current honors students. Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana. Fall 2009.
• "Semantic Search Beyond RDF?" Invited Panel Statement at the 2009 Semantic Technology Conference, San Jose, California. June 10-14, 2009.
• “Wenn Kirche komisch sein will?” [When the church tries to be funny?]. With Andreas Waschbüsch. Invited paper at the Kassel Humor Colloquium, Kassel, Germany, February 2009.
• "Puns: Pseudologically Motivated Signs." Lecture for the course "Semantics" by Victor Raskin, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana. January 14, 2009.
• “Meaning for Humor Researchers,” “Is Incongruity that is Resolved Humor?” “GTVH Workshop." Lectures at the 8th International Summer School and Symposium on Humour and Laughter: Theory, Research, and Application, University of Galati, Romania. June 23-28, 2008.
• "Will Semantics Give Web Search a Facelift?" Invited Panel Statement at the 2008 Semantic Technology Conference, San Jose, California. May 18-22, 2008.
• "Semantic Search." Invited paper at the New York Semantic Web Meetup Group. New York, New York. April 17, 2008.
• "Semantic Search: Content vs. Formalism." Invited round table statement at LangTech2008, Language and Speech Technology Conference, Rome, Italy. February 28-29, 2008.
• "The Ontological Semantic Perspective on the Semantic Web." With Victor Raskin. Invited paper at the New York Semantic Web Meetup Group, New York, New York. August 24, 2007.
• “Is Incongruity That is Resolved Humor?” “Wordplay: Humorous and Non-humorous,” “The 3-Hour GTVH Workshop,” and “Cartoons: Not just Jokes with a Picture” (with Andrea Samson). Lectures at the 7th International Summer School and Symposium on Humour and Laughter: Theory, Research, and Application, University of Aberdeen, United Kingdom. July 9-14, 2007. 
• “Beyond Proof-of-Concept: Implementing Ontological Semantics as a Commercial Product.” Invited talk at the 4th Midwest Computational Linguistics Colloquium 2007, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, April 28, 2007.
• “The Linguistics of Humor.” Lecture for the Course “Humor and Laughter” by Willibald Ruch and Ursula Beermann, University of Zurich, Switzerland. December 2006.
• “Is Incongruity Resolved Humor?” “Wordplay: Humorous and Non-humorous,” “A GTVH Seminar.” With Salvatore Attardo, and “Cartoons: Not just Jokes with a Picture.” With Andrea Samson. Lectures at the 6th International Summer School and Symposium on Humour and Laughter: Theory, Research, and Application, Universität Fribourg, Switzerland. July 10-14, 2006. 
• “The Ontology of Humor Consumers: What do College Students and Computers Find Funny?” Invited talk at the 2006 Humor Symposium, Youngstown State University, Youngstown, Ohio. April 2006.
• “Dichter Humor durch dichte Kultur?” [Dense Humor through Dense Culture?]. Invited paper at the Kassel Humor Colloquium, Kassel, Germany, February 2006.
• “The Linguistics of Humor.” Interactive lecture taught via the Internet (webcam/chat/forum) for the Course “Humor and Laughter” by Willibald Ruch and Ursula Beermann at the University of Zurich. December 2005
• “Introduction to the Semantic Script Theory of Humor and the General Theory of Verbal Humor,” and “Cartoons: Aesthetics and Cognition” (with Andrea Samson). Lectures at the 5th International Summer School and Symposium on Humour and Laughter: Theory, Research, and Application, Universität Tübingen, Germany. July 25-30, 2005. 
• “3 WD Meets GTVH: Breaking the Ground for Interdisciplinary Humor Research.” With Willibald Ruch. Keynote address at the 2005 Conference of the International Society for Humor Studies, Youngstown State University, Youngstown, OH. June 13-18, 2005.
• “Analyzing Texts Using the GTVH.” With Salvatore Attardo. Workshop at the 2005 Conference of the International Society for Humor Studies, Youngstown State University, Youngstown, OH. June 13-18, 2005.
• “Ontology and Lexicon Acquisition in Ontological Semantics.” With Katrina E. Triezenberg. 5-day Tutorial and Workshop at the Department of Theoretical and Computational Linguistics of Lomonosov State University, Moscow, Russian Federation. May 24-28, 2005.
• “Linguistic Overview of Punning,” “Introduction to the General Theory of Verbal Humor,” “Psychology and Linguistics on Joke Dimensions and Resources,” and “The Laughter Epidemic: How Much Laughter, How Much Epidemic?” Lectures at the 4th International Summer School and Symposium on Humour and Laughter: Theory, Research, and Application, University of Wolverhampton, UK. Sept. 6-11, 2004.
• “Puns: A Linguistic Review,” and “An Introduction to the General Theory of Verbal Humor.” Lectures at the 3rd International Summer School and Symposium on Humour and Laughter: Theory, Research, and Application, University of Edinburgh, UK. Sept. 16, 2003.
• “The Epic 1962 Tanganyika Laughter Epidemic.” Keynote address at the 2003 Conference of the International Society for Humor Studies, Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago, IL. July 8-10, 2003.
• “YPS: The Ymperfect Pun Selector for Computational Humor.” Invited talk at Twente University, Enschede, The Netherlands. May 15, 2003.
• “YPS: The Ymperfect Pun Selector for Computational Humor.” Invited talk at the ITC-irst Center, Trento, Italy. May 6, 2003.
• “Natural Language Information Assurance and Security.” With Victor Raskin. Plenary address at the Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS) Security Seminar, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN. April 8, 2003.
• “Current Issues in Linguistic Humor Research.” LinguA guest lecture at the Universität Hannover, Germany. June 18, 2002.
• “Current Issues in Linguistic Humor Research.” Invited talk at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. June 6, 2002.
• “Ontology for IAS: Extending Research and Application Paradigms In Information Security.” With Victor Raskin and Katrina E. Triezenberg. Plenary address at the Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS) Security Seminar, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN. February 6, 2002.

Awards, Grants, Appointments

• since 2007
  Graduate Faculty of Purdue University (Adjunct Appointment) 
• 2006
  Graduate Faculty of Georgia Southern University
• 2005
  Swiss National Foundation Grant PI0I1-111577/1 for the project “The Ontology of Humor: Psychological and Linguistic Foundations” 
• 2004
  European Union Marie Curie Grant FP6-2002-Mobility-12 Proposal 516528 for “Integration and Development of Interdisciplinary Humor Research” (declined)
• 2003
  Emerging Scholar Award of the International Society for Humor Studies
• 2003
  GSA travel award to support the presentation of research at the Computer-Human Interface (CHI) 2003 Conference of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in Ft. Lauderdale, FL 
• 2001
  Quadrille Ball Scholarship for research in natural language processing and information security 
• 2001
  GSA travel award to support the presentation of research at the Conference of the International Society of Humor Studies in College Park, MD