Dr. Daniel Bauer

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

Office Hours

I'm currently on Sabbatical in Edinburgh until January 2027. Please feel free to reach out via email, but know that my response time may be slower than usual.

Teaching

Summer 2026
COMS W4705 - Natural Language Processing

Spring 2026
COMS W2132 - Intermediate Computing in Python
COMS W4705 - Natural Language Processing

Past Semesters
SHAPE Summer High School Academic Program for Engineers, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence (Summer 2025, NEW)
COMS W2132 - Intermediate Computing in Python (Spring 2025, NEW)
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, Spring/Summer/Fall 2025)
ENGI E1006 - Intro. to Computing for Engi. and Appl. Scientists (Since Spring 2017)
COMS W4995.1 - Topics in CS: Semantic Representations for Natural Language Processing (Spring 2021 & 2022)
COMS W4701 - Artificial Intelligence (Fall 2017)
COMS W3137 - Honors Data Structures and Algorithms (taught in Java and Scala, every Spring 2017-2023)
COMS W3134 - Data Structures in Java (Spring / Fall 2015 & 2016, Fall 2019, Summer 2020, Fall 2021)
SHAPE Summer High School Academic Program for Engineers, Introductory and Advanced Computer Science (every summer 2017-2024)
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 Engineering Committee on Instruction (COI).

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 on the NACLO Columbia site.
In 2026, we are also a proctoring site for the USA North American AI Olympiad (USA-NA-AIO) (students interested in participating at Columbia, please contact me by email).