PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Manfred Stede

Manfred Stede is a computational linguist who works on discourse structure and automatic text understanding, with applications in sentiment analysis and argumentation mining. After studying computer science and linguistics at TU Berlin, earning an M.Sc. at Purdue in 1990 and defending his doctoral thesis at the University of Toronto in 1996, he worked on the Verbmobil machine translation project until 2000 and became a professor at Potsdam University in 2001. The 2011 paper "Lexicon-Based Methods for Sentiment Analysis", which he coauthored with Maite Taboada, Julian Brooke, Milan Tofiloski and Kimberly Voll, won the ACL Test-of-Time Paper Award in 2021. He published Discourse Processing in 2012 and presented Potsdam Commentary Corpus 2.0 with Arne Neumann in 2014. At Potsdam, he is Professor of Applied Computational Linguistics and directs the Applied CompLing Discourse Research Lab.

Born
1965
Badges

Years link to their sources.

Timeline

  1. 1985–1996

    From Berlin to a Toronto PhD

    He studies computer science and linguistics at TU Berlin from 1985 to 1989 and earns an M.Sc. in computer science at Purdue University in 1990. He defends his doctoral thesis in computer science at the University of Toronto in 1996, with a fellowship at FAW Ulm for part of his doctoral years.

  2. 1995–2001

    Verbmobil and lexical semantics

    He is a research assistant in the Verbmobil machine translation project at TU Berlin from 1995 to 2000, and a researcher at Interprice GmbH in Berlin in 2000 and 2001. In 1999, he publishes Lexical Semantics and Knowledge Representation in Multilingual Text Generation in the Springer International Series in Engineering and Computer Science; the book links lexical semantics with knowledge represented in a description logic for language generation.

  3. 2001

    Professor at Potsdam

    He becomes Professor of Applied Computational Linguistics at Potsdam University in 2001.

  4. 2011

    Lexicon-based sentiment analysis

    In 2011, he coauthors "Lexicon-Based Methods for Sentiment Analysis" with Maite Taboada, Julian Brooke, Milan Tofiloski and Kimberly Voll. The paper appears in Computational Linguistics, volume 37, issue 2.

  5. 2012

    The Discourse Processing book

    In 2012, Morgan & Claypool publishes his Discourse Processing as volume 15 of the Synthesis Lectures on Human Language Technologies. The book frames discourse processing as marking up a text with structural descriptions on several levels.

  6. 2014

    Potsdam Commentary Corpus 2.0

    In 2014, he and Arne Neumann present Potsdam Commentary Corpus 2.0 in the LREC 2014 proceedings in Reykjavik. The corpus holds 175 German newspaper commentaries annotated with syntax trees, nominal coreference, connectives and their arguments, and Rhetorical Structure Theory discourse trees.

  7. 2021

    A Test-of-Time Paper Award

    The Association for Computational Linguistics names "Lexicon-Based Methods for Sentiment Analysis" a winner of its 2021 Test-of-Time Paper Award for 2011 papers. He shares the award with Maite Taboada, Julian Brooke, Milan Tofiloski and Kimberly Voll.

  8. As of October 2026

    Directing the Discourse Research Lab

    He is Professor of Applied Computational Linguistics at Potsdam University and directs the Applied CompLing Discourse Research Lab, whose topics include argumentation mining, discourse parsing, climate change discourse and social media processing. His research and teaching revolve around discourse structure and automatic text understanding, often for research questions from the social sciences. He serves as Area Chair at ARR and at LREC 2026, and as Senior Area Co-Chair at Coling 2025.

Career

  1. Since 2001University of PotsdamProfessor of Applied Computational Linguistics
  2. 2000–2001InterpriceResearcher
  3. 1995–2000Technische Universität BerlinResearch Assistant

Education

  1. 1996University of TorontoPhD
  2. 1990Purdue UniversityM.Sc.
  3. 1989Technische Universität Berlin

From the biography.

  1. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes University of Potsdam. We estimate where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led. Massachusetts Institute of Technology leads with 467 former students, including 291 recorded doctorates.
  2. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes University of Potsdam. We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.
  3. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes University of Potsdam. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other university. We compare doctorate and 5+ year employment links, career timing and current workplaces for 187 major-prize and 1,111 best-paper winners.
  4. Google has the highest combined h-index among AI organizationsIncludes Technische Universität Berlin. We estimate that Google holds the highest combined h-index at 8,016, while universities account for 73% of the deduplicated total across AI organizations.

Colleagues

People named in this biography, and people with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

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  1. Manfred Stede web.archive.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Lexical Semantics and Knowledge Representation in Multilingual Text Generation by Manfred Stede | Goodreads goodreads.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. Lexicon-Based Methods for Sentiment Analysis - ACL Anthology aclanthology.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. ACL Test-of-Time Papers Award Recipients aclweb.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. NEW BOOK: Discourse Processing, by Manfred Stede, Potsdam University listserv.linguistlist.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. Potsdam Commentary Corpus 2.0: Annotation for Discourse Research - ACL Anthology aclanthology.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. Applied CL Discourse Research Lab: Mission statement angcl.ling.uni-potsdam.de. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. Applied CL Discourse Research Lab: Research angcl.ling.uni-potsdam.de. Checked 21 October 2026.