Born and raised in Germany, Stefanie received her doctoral degree at the University of Bremen in Germany before moving to the United States in 2006. Before joining UNT, she was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the English Language Institute at the University of Michigan and held a lecturer position in the Linguistics Department at University of California at Santa Barbara. Stefanie's research interests are in second language acquisition, corpus linguistics, and construction grammar. Her current research centers around the question how second language learners acquire native like expression and fluency, and how learner language compares to native speaker language. When she is not working, Stefanie enjoys watching movies, reading, cooking, eating, working out, and spending time with her family and friends.