Elina Rubertus

Elina Rubertus is a Researcher at the Leibniz Centre for General Linguistics (ZAS) in Berlin, working in Research Area 1 'Laboratory Phonology' and on the DFG/ANR-funded project VOC2SPEAK (An integrative-interactive approach to speech development). She completed her PhD in cognitive science at the University of Potsdam in 2024 with a dissertation titled 'Coarticulatory changes across childhood – implications for speech motor and phonological development', graded summa cum laude.

Her educational background includes:

• PhD in Cognitive Science, University of Potsdam (2024)
• M.Sc. in Experimental and Clinical Linguistics, University of Potsdam (2015)
• M.A. in Linguistics, Humboldt-University of Berlin (2014)
• B.Sc. in General Linguistics, University of Potsdam (2013)

Rubertus specializes in childhood speech development, focusing on coarticulatory patterns, phonological processing, and speech motor control in young children. Her methodology integrates laboratory phonology techniques with experimental paradigms, including real-time MRI recordings of child speech developed during her research stay at the University of Southern California. She frequently collaborates with infant research facilities like BabyLAB at the University of Potsdam to study early language acquisition mechanisms.

She received the Best of the Year award at Potsdam in June 2025 for her contributions to speech development research.

Her professional trajectory includes coordinating the Laboratory for Oral Language Acquisition (LOLA) at the University of Potsdam and conducting research on language-cognition-brain interactions in early development. She completed a certified Science Communication qualification program through the Potsdam Graduate School in 2020-2021.