Nils Dahlbäck

Professor in Cognitive Science

Natural Language Processing Laboratory
Division of Human Centered Systems (HCS)
Department of Computer and Information Science
Linköping University.

Director of SweCog (The Swedish National Graduate School in Cognitive Science)

Previous affiliations

• The Cognitive Science group LUCS at Lund University
• SICS
• Department of Computer and Systems Science (DSV), Stockholm University

Office Hours

Thursdays 13-14

Research

My primary research interest is on the interface between cognition and communication, including similarities and differences in cognition and communication between natural and artificial agents, as well as, but to a lesser extent, similarities and differences between acting and communicating in real and virtual environments.

My work on various aspects of human-computer interaction has been motivated both by wanting to contribute to the development of new forms of human-computer interaction, including the use of natural language dialogue, and by using lessons learned from working with these often restricted forms of communication and cognition to gain a deeper understanding of human communication and cognition.

Over the years, I have been working in the following areas:

• Cultural differences in social responses to media. This is joint work with Cliff Nass at the Department of Communication, Stanford University.
• Natural Language Processing, especially dialogue management for natural language interfaces. Most of this is joint work with Arne Jönsson.
• Hypermedia navigation and individual differences cognitive styles and abilities.
• Human Computer Interaction, especially intelligent interfaces. This work was done primarily during my period as a member of the PERSONA and PUSH projects at the HUMLE group at SICS, the Swedish Institute for Computer Science 1997-1999.
• E-learning. The focus of this work is on the interplay between variation in two areas, the pupil's or student's learning styles on the one hand, and on variation in content types or kinds of knowledge on the other, and how these influence the design and use of e-learning. A short literature review written in 2001 as part of this work can be found here.
• Cognitive aspects of navigation in 3D Virtual Reality environments.

Publications

Here you can find a list of my publications.

Thesis projects

I am interested in supervising thesis projects on all levels (bachelor, master, ph.d.) in my areas of interest.

Teaching

I will teach the following courses on Bachelor's and Master's level during 2009/2010

• Introduction to Cognitive Science, 729 G01, 6 hp for undergraduate students.
• Distributed and Situated Cognition, 729 G12, 6 hp for undergraduate students
• Cognitive Science seminars 729 A15, 7, 5 hp for first year master's students
• Cognitive Science seminars 729 A42, 7, 5 hp for second yearmaster's students

All these courses are parts of the Cognitive Science Master's Program or Cognitive Science Undergraduate Program, Linköping University.

The development of undergraduate and graduate education in cognitive science has always been an interest of mine. I participated in a session on Undergraduate Education in Cognitive Science at CogSci 2000. My talk was based on a paper called Cognitive Science as Three Methodological Cultures. You can also look at the slides for the talk.

Professional services

• Director of SweCog, the Swedish National Graduate School in Cogntive Science.
• Member of the board of the the Cognitive Science study program.
• Member of the Graduate School Committee of the Swedish Graduate School for Human-Machine Interaction.
• Member of the Cognitive Science Society's ad hoc group for strengthening Cognitive Science in Europe

Miscellaneous

An interview with me in the Swedish daily Östgöta Correspondenten (In Swedish).

For the Cognitive Science students' magazine På Tvären #2, 1999, I wrote a short article (in Swedish) on the early history of the Cognitive Science Master's program in Linköping. The entire issue of the magazine can be found here.

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Contact information

nda@ida.liu.se

Nils Dahlbäck, Dept. of Computer and Information Science,

Linköping University, SE-581 83 LINKÖPING, SWEDEN

+46 13 28 16 64

+46 13 14 22 31 (Att: Nils Dahlbäck)

Visitors: Room F.472, Department of Computer and Information Science,
Linköping University

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Nils Dahlbäck