Dr. Daniel Bauer

I am a Senior Lecturer in the Computer Science department at Columbia University in the City of New York.

Office Hours

Spring 2025: Mon 12:00-1:30pm, 704 CEPSR.

Teaching

Spring 2025
COMS W4705 - Natural Language Processing
COMS W2132 - Intermediate Computing in Python (NEW!)

Past Semesters
COMS W4705- Natural Language Processing (Spring / Fall 2018, Summer 2019, Fall/Summer 2020, Summer 2021, Summer 2022, Spring/Summer/Fall 2023, Spring/Summer/Fall 2024)
COMS W4995.1 - Topics in CS: Semantic Representations for Natural Language Processing (Spring 2021 & 2022)
COMS W4701 - Artificial Intelligence (Fall 2017)
ENGI E1006 - Intro. to Computing for Engi. and Appl. Scientists (Since Spring 2017)
COMS W3137 - Honors Data Structures and Algorithms (taught in Java and Scala, every Spring since 2017)
COMS W3134 - Data Structures in Java (Spring / Fall 2015 & 2016, Fall 2019, Summer 2020, Fall 2021)
SHAPE Summer High School Academic Program for Engineers (every summer since 2017)
COMS W3101 - Programming Languages: Python (Fall 2014)
COMS W3101 - Programming Languages: Scala (Fall 2014)
COMS W3101 - Programming Languages: Python (Spring 2012)

Research

If you are not a Columbia student, please do not contact me about research oportunities or internships.

My background is in Natural Language Processing / Computational Linguistics. The long-term mission of my research in this area is to develop systems that can accurately interpret natural language in a multimodal environment and in linguistic discourse. I am currently interested in exploring what LLMs know about natural language semantics.

My current research interests in computer science education include integrating functional programming into the CS curriculum, understanding how pre-college computing experience shapes performance and attitudes in introductory CS courses, and techniques for improving student engagement and collaboration.

Service

I currently serve as the CS department representative at the Columbia SEAS Committee on Instruction.
As TA/CA chair I am responsible for assigning course assistants to CS courses. If you are a Columbia student interested in TAing, please click here (requires MICE login).

PhD students

Chad DeChant (website, graduated 2024).

Education

2017 - PhD Computer Science, Columbia University
2010 - MSc in Language Science and Technology, Saarland University, Germany
2007 - BSc Cognitive Science, University of Osnabrück, Germany.

Other

Every year I host participants in the North American Computational Linguistics Open Competition (NACLO) at Columbia. More information about the NACLO Columbia site.
I am a co-founder of WordsEye, a startup company that enables anyone to create 3D scenes by simply describing them in natural language.
I was an issue editor for the ACM XRDS Fall 2014 Issue on Natural Language.