Nick Danis

Nick Danis is a Senior Lecturer in Linguistics at Washington University's Arts & Sciences school, specializing in phonology, computational linguistics, Optimality Theory, and African languages. He directs courses including Introduction to Linguistics, Computational Linguistics, Phonological Analysis, and The Linguistics of Constructed Languages.

Research Focus: Danis investigates theoretical phonology with emphasis on place articulation processes, vowel-consonant interactions, and computational modeling. His work analyzes phonological representations using formal mathematical approaches and develops algorithms for linguistic pattern recognition.

Teaching Innovation: Received the Washington University Course Innovation Grant (2019) for developing curriculum around constructed languages and computational methods. Teaches 5-6 courses annually spanning introductory to advanced topics.

Honors: Recognized with Departmental Teaching Award at Stanford (2017), Stanford Graduate Fellowship (2015), multiple mathematical olympiad medals, and Iranian Mathematical Society Competition gold medals.

Lab & Advising: Supervised 4 honors theses on computational phonology and language construction. Developed Python-based linguistic analysis tools for classroom use.