Institute of Communications Engineering

M.Sc. Carolin Schindler

PhD Thesis

Embedded Aigaion Query

Towards Natural Multimodal Interaction with Argumentative Dialogue Systems

Argumentation is an essential element of human communication and reasoning. Whenever information is incomplete or inconsistent, we start to argue. This can take place internally as well as externally with other people or conversational agents. Recent works increase the flexibility of argumentative dialogue systems with respect to the possible topics of the argumentation. Still, the naturalness of the interaction with the dialogue system shows room for improvement.

Possible research directions are

  • the set of moves allowed by the system and the user,
  • the modalities perceived, processed, and evaluated by the dialogue system,
  • the modalities output/generated by the dialogue system,
  • the combination of different types of argumentative dialogue,
  • the communication strategy applied by the system, and
  • the extension and refinement of the underlying argumentation structure / knowledge base of the system and its automatic generation.

Research Interests

  • Natural Multimodal Human-Machine Interaction
  • Natural Language Processing, esp. in the field of Computational Argumentation
  • Aritificial Intelligence, esp. Machine Learning including Deep Learning

Achieved Academic Degrees

Master of Science in Cognitive Systems at Ulm University
Bachelor of Science in Informationssystemtechnik (Communications and Computer Engineering) at Ulm University

Through my inter-disciplinary course of studies, my background is in Computer Science and Psychology as well as in Electrical Engineering.

Contributor
  • priority programme Robust Argumentation Machines (RATIO)
    (in the scope of my Bachelor's and Master's thesis at Ulm University)
    • phase 1: How to Win Arguments - Empowering Virtual Agents to Improve their Persuasiveness (EVA)
    • phase 2: BEA - Building Engaging Argumentation
  • Artificial Intelligence for Individualised Learning Path and Processes (2LIKE)
    (in the scope of a student project at Ulm University)
  • Self-Supporting Multimodal Interaction (SEMULIN)
    (in the scope of being a student employee at Elektrobit Automotive GmbH, Ulm)

Please, see https://orcid.org/0009-0007-5819-3035 for a full list of my publications.

2025

F. H. Eldessouky, N. Ehab, C. Schindler, M. Abuelkheir and W. Minker
Structured Knowledge meets GenAI: A Framework for Logic-Driven Language Models
Proceedings of the Workshop on Generative AI and Knowledge Graphs (GenAIK)
2025-01 | conference-paper
URI: https://aclanthology.org/2025.genaik-1.7/

2024

C. Schindler, D. Mayumi, Y. Matsuda, N. Rach, K. Yasumoto and W. Minker
ARCADE: An Augmented Reality Display Environment for Multimodal Interaction with Conversational Agents
Companion Proceedings of the 26th International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI)
2024-11-04 | conference-paper
DOI: 10.1145/3686215.3688376

2021

received best paper award
N. Rach, C. Schindler, I. Feustel, J. Daxenberger, W. Minker and S. Ultes
From Argument Search to Argumentative Dialogue: A Topic-independent Approach to Argument Acquisition for Dialogue Systems
Proceedings of the 22nd Annual Meeting of the Special Interest Group on Discourse and Dialogue (SIGDIAL)
2021 | conference-paper
DOI: 10.18653/v1/2021.sigdial-1.39

Thesis, Project, and Seminar Topics for Students

When you are interested in working on a thesis, project, or seminar within my PhD topic and research interests, just write me an email (Deutsch, English). Based on your background, we can discuss open topics and your own proposals.

The following lists are exemplary and as such intended to be illustrative rather than exhaustive. Therefore, even if you did not find a matching topic, please, do not hesitate to contact me.

Topics for Seminars
  • The Relationship between Argumentation and Recommendation
  • The Relationship between Argumentation and Information Retrieval
  • The Role of Multimodality in non-persuasive Argumentation
  • Ethics and Biases in Embodied Argumentation
  • Modular Dialogue System Architecture vs LLMs
  • Automatic Evaluation of Open-domain Dialogue Systems
Topics for Projects
  • Validation of User-generated Arguments in Realtime: Fallacies, Appropriateness, ... (you may choose one kind of validation)
  • Shared Embeddings for Different Computational Argumentation Tasks
  • Improving the Multimodal Capabilities of Embodied Conversational Agents displayed on ARCADE
Topics for Theses (or Projects)
  • Identification and Naming of Overlapping, Topic-specific Frames: Combining Inductive and Deductive Approaches
  • Hierarchical Identification and Naming of Frames: How many Frames and at which Level?
  • Knowledge-grounded Natural Language Generation (NLG) with Large Language Models (LLMs) for Argumentative Dialogues: How to overcome Hallucinations?

2025

Master's Student (German University in Cairo)
(in progress)
Master's thesis, 2025

Master's Student (German University in Cairo)
(in progress)
Master's thesis, 2025

Master's Student (Kyushu University)
Design and Preliminary Evaluation of a Health Visualization and Avatar System to Improve Presenteeism
Master's thesis, 2025

Bachelor's Student (Ulm University)
(in progress)
Bachelor's thesis, 2025

Master's Student (Ulm University)
(in progress)
Project Work, 2025

Bachelor's Student (Ulm University)
(in progress)
Project Work, 2025

Master's Student (Ulm University)
The Relationship between Argumentation and Question Answering
Seminar Work, 2025

Master's Student (Ulm University)
The Relationship between Argumentation and Social XAI
Seminar Work, 2025

Master's Student (Ulm University)
Enhancing Recommendation Systems through Argumentation Structures
Seminar Work, 2025

Bachelor's Student (Ulm University)
The Role of Multimodality in Persuasive Argumentation
Seminar Work, 2025

2024

Master's Student (Ulm University)
Knowledge-grounded Natural Language Generation: From Wikipedia to the Argumentative Domain
Project Work, 2024

Master's Student (Ulm University)
Natural Language Generation for Knowledge-grounded Dialogue Systems
Seminar Work, 2024

Teaching Assistance

  • Summer Term 2024
    • Multimodale Benutzerschnittstellen
    • Anwendungsorientierte Software-Entwicklung

Projects and Seminars

  • Winter Term 2024/25
    • Projekt Dialogsysteme für Ingenieure (project)
    • Project Dialogue Systems (project)
    • Dialogue Systems (seminar exercise)
  • Summer Term 2024
    • Projekt Dialogsysteme für Ingenieure (project)
  • Winter Term 2023/24
    • Dialogue Systems (seminar exercise)

Getting in Touch with my Research

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