Isabelle Augenstein

Timeline

1. By 2012

   An information-extraction paper

   Born in southern Germany, she grows up with a father who researches chemistry. At 16, she specializes in computer science in high school and studies at Heidelberg University and the University of Sheffield. In 2012, she publishes her first scientific research article on automatic information extraction at an international conference.

2. By 2017

   From Karlsruhe to Copenhagen

   She begins as a research assistant at the University of Karlsruhe, then works as a PhD student and research associate in the Sheffield NLP group before joining UCL's Machine Reading group as a postdoctoral researcher. In July 2017, she joins the University of Copenhagen as a tenure-track assistant professor. Her research interests include statistical NLP, machine learning, weakly supervised and low-resource learning, machine reading, and fact-checking.

3. 2019

   A Sapere Aude fellowship

   In 2019, she receives a Sapere Aude fellowship from Independent Research Fund Denmark to lead a research project.

4. 2021

   An explainable fact-checking thesis

   In 2021, she receives the University of Copenhagen's Doctor Scientarium award for her doctoral thesis Towards Explainable Fact Checking.

5. October 2022

   A full professorship

   In October 2022, she becomes a full professor at the University of Copenhagen and Denmark's youngest female professor. Her group works on automated fact-checking, language models, and gender stereotypes in digital language.

6. 2024

   Karen Spärck Jones and EACL awards

   She receives the 2024 Karen Spärck Jones Award. Her co-authored paper Semantic Sensitivities and Inconsistent Predictions: Measuring the Fragility of NLI Models receives an Outstanding Paper Award at EACL 2024.

7. 2025

   The DRUID dataset

   In July 2025, she co-authors the ACL paper A Reality Check on Context Utilisation for Retrieval-Augmented Generation. The paper introduces DRUID, a dataset of real-world queries and contexts for studying how language models use retrieved information. In November 2025, she becomes vice chair of UCPH AI, a cross-faculty initiative that coordinates the university's AI research, education, and innovation.

8. Since May 2026

   Deputy head for research

   In May 2026, she becomes Deputy Head of Department for Research at the University of Copenhagen while continuing as a full professor and research group leader. She heads the Copenhagen Natural Language Understanding group and co-leads the Danish Pioneer Centre for AI.