Portrait
Manar Ali
PhD Candidate
Bielefeld University
About Me

I am a doctoral researcher in Computational Linguistics at Bielefeld University and a member of the CRC 1646 ‘Linguistic Creativity in Communication’. With a background in cognitive science, I am interested in developing cognitively inspired computational models of multimodal reference in interaction. My broader research interests include vision and language, reinforcement learning, emergent communication, and NeuroAI. I also work on side projects in Arabic NLP.

I am supervised by Hendrik Buschmeier and co-supervised by Sina Zarrieß . From November 2026, I will start a research visit with Tessa Verhoef at The Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS).

Before starting my PhD, I worked with Elia Bruni at the NLP Group, where I also completed my Master's thesis, and worked as a research assistant at DFKI.

Education
  • University of Osnabrück
    M.Sc. in Cognitive Science
    Specialization in Artificial Intelligence and Neuroinformatics
    2024
  • University of Osnabrück
    B.Sc. in Cognitive Science
    Specialization in Computer Science, Computational Linguistics, Neuroinformatics, Neuroscience and Cognitive neuropsychology
    2021
Experience
  • German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI)
    Research Assistant
    2022 - 2023
  • University of Osnabrück
    Teaching Assistant
    2021 - 2024
  • Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences
    Research Intern
    2019
Activities
2026
•
Our paper "AraMIP: Extending MIPVU Towards Metaphor Identification in Arabic" was accepted to the ArabicNLP Conference @EMNLP 2026. Budapest, Hungary.
Aug.
•
Our paper "Probing the Communicative Efficiency of LLMs via Content Selection in Visually Uncommon Reference Games" was accepted to INLG 2026. Utrecht, the Netherlands.
Aug.
•
Attended the DGfS Summer School 2026. Bielefeld, Germany.
Aug.
•
Attended the BriGap Workshop and presented a poster. Paris, France.
Jul.
•
Presented a poster at the SAIL Closing Conference on reference games and clarification requests. Bielefeld, Germany.
May
•
Our paper "Reference Games as a Testbed for the Alignment of Model Uncertainty and Clarification Requests" was accepted to the GEM Workshop at ACL 2026. San Diego, USA.
Apr.
•
Attended the Interdisciplinary College (IK 2026) and presented a poster. Günne, Germany.
Mar.
2025
•
Designed and presented an interactive game demonstrating limitations of current vision-language models at the GENIALE Science Festival. Bielefeld, Germany.
Oct.
•
Presented our work on neuro-symbolic approaches to referring expression generation at the CLASP Conference. Gothenburg, Sweden.
Sep.
•
Attended the 29th Workshop on the Semantics and Pragmatics of Dialogue (SemDial) and assisted the volunteer team. Bielefeld, Germany.
Sep.
•
Attended ACL 2025, where our team presented our work on multimodal language models as listeners in referential tasks. Vienna, Austria.
Jul.
•
Presented a poster at NLG in the Lowlands. Tilburg, the Netherlands.
Jun.
•
Gave a public presentation at the Volkshochschule on creativity and language models. Bielefeld, Germany.
Apr.
•
Attended the Interdisciplinary College (IK 2025) and presented a poster. Günne, Germany.
Mar.
2024
•
Sep.
Recent Publications
AraMIP: Extending MIPVU Towards Metaphor Identification in Arabic

Mandar Marathe, Manar Ali, Sara Nabhani, Raia Abu Ahmad, Ibrahim Baroud, Omar Momen

Proceedings of The Fourth Arabic Natural Language Processing Conference @EMNLP 2026 (to appear)

[code]

AraMIP: Extending MIPVU Towards Metaphor Identification in Arabic

Mandar Marathe, Manar Ali, Sara Nabhani, Raia Abu Ahmad, Ibrahim Baroud, Omar Momen

Proceedings of The Fourth Arabic Natural Language Processing Conference @EMNLP 2026 (to appear)

[code]

Probing the Communicative Efficiency of LLMs via Content Selection in Visually Uncommon Reference Games

Simeon Junker, Manar Ali, Kristina Kobrock, Larissa Koch, Marika Sarzotti, Hendrik Buschmeier, Sina Zarrieß

Proceedings of INLG 2026 (to appear)

Probing the Communicative Efficiency of LLMs via Content Selection in Visually Uncommon Reference Games

Simeon Junker, Manar Ali, Kristina Kobrock, Larissa Koch, Marika Sarzotti, Hendrik Buschmeier, Sina Zarrieß

Proceedings of INLG 2026 (to appear)

All publications