Sebastian Padó

Sebastian Padó is a Professor and Chair of Theoretical Computational Linguistics at the Institute for Natural Language Processing (IMS) of the University of Stuttgart. He serves as Study Dean for Natural Language Processing and Computational Linguistics within Faculty 5 (Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, and Information Technology). His research focuses on computational semantics, leveraging data-driven approaches to model meaning in language, with applications in political discourse analysis, emotion analysis, and cross-lingual NLP.

He leads projects such as CEAT (Emotion Analysis via Appraisal Theory), FIBISS (Fact-Checking in Biomedical Information), and MARDY (Argument Dynamics Modeling). Collaborations include institutions like the University of Tübingen, University of Pisa, and University of Zagreb. His work bridges computational linguistics with social sciences, addressing topics like political positioning, media bias detection, and historical text analysis.

Padó oversees the Department of Theoretical Computational Linguistics, managing research and teaching activities. His group's contributions span semantic modeling, neural network interpretability, and interdisciplinary applications in digital humanities. He actively publishes in top venues, with recent work on multilingual models, political text analysis, and transformer architectures.

Key achievements include developing methods for emotion analysis in literature and news, creating datasets on political debates (e.g., DEbateNet-mig15), and advancing frame semantics through distributional models. His lab also explores explainable AI techniques for NLP systems, emphasizing transparency and ethical considerations.