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Stuart Shieber

James O. Welch, Jr. and Virginia B. Welch Professor of Computer Science, Harvard School of Engineering and Applied SciencesDirector, Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society

Stuart Shieber is James O. Welch, Jr. and Virginia B. Welch Professor of Computer Science in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University.  His primary research field is computational linguistics, the study of human languages from the perspective of computer science.  His research contributions have extended beyond that field as well, to theoretical linguistics, natural-language processing, computer-human interaction, automated graphic design, the philosophy of artificial intelligence, computer privacy and security, and computational biology.  He is the founding director of the Center for Research on Computation and Society and a director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society.

Professor Shieber received an AB in applied mathematics summa cum laude from Harvard College in 1981 and a PhD in computer science from Stanford University in 1989.  He was awarded a Presidential Young Investigator award in 1991, and was named a Presidential Faculty Fellow in 1993, one of only thirty in the country in all areas of science and engineering.  He has been awarded two honorary chairs: the John L. Loeb Associate Professorship in Natural Sciences in 1993 and the Harvard College Professorship in 2001.  He was named a fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence in 2004, and the Benjamin White Whitney Scholar at the Radcliffe Institute for 2006-07.

His work on open access and scholarly communication policy, especially his development of Harvard's open-access policies, led to his appointment as the first director of the university's Office for Scholarly Communication, where he oversees initiatives to open, share, and preserve scholarship.


Projects & Tools

Harvard Open Access Project

The Harvard Open Access Project (HOAP) fosters the growth of open access to research, within Harvard and beyond.

Past

Copyright for Librarians

The Berkman Center partnered with eIFL to deliver a distance learning program on copyright for librarians. The resulting curriculum, made available on March 24, 2010, can be used…


Publications

Publication
Oct 16, 2015

Good Practices for University Open-Access Policies

We have worked directly for many years with colleagues at many institutions on policies to facilitate open access to faculty research. We began writing this guide in 2011 to…

Publication
Oct 22, 2013

Good Practices for University Open-Access Policies

Peter Suber and Stuart Shieber release the first print edition of a guide focused on recommendations for university policies on open access to faculty research.


News

May 21, 2013

Peter Suber to Direct Harvard’s Office for Scholarly Communication

Succeeds Founding Director Stuart Shieber

The Harvard Library and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University are pleased to announce the appointment of Peter Suber as director of the Office for…

Oct 17, 2012

Good practices for university open-access policies

The Harvard Open Access Project is pleased to release version 1.0 of a guide to good practices for university open-access policies.

Nov 14, 2011

John Palfrey's Next Chapter: Onward to the Phillips Academy!

The directors of the Berkman Center wish to extend our warmest congratulations to John Palfrey, our colleague and friend, upon his appointment as the Head of School of the…


Courses

Abstraction and Design in Computation - Spring 2024

Fundamental concepts in the design of computer programs, emphasizing the crucial role of abstraction. The goal of the course is to give students insight into the difference…

Introduction to Computational Linguistics and Natural-language Processing - Fall 2023

Natural-language-processing applications are ubiquitous: Alexa can set a reminder, or play a particular song, or provide your local weather if you ask; Google Translate can…

Abstraction and Design in Computation - Spring 2023

Fundamental concepts in the design of computer programs, emphasizing the crucial role of abstraction. The goal of the course is to give students insight into the difference…

Abstraction and Design in Computation - Spring 2021

Fundamental concepts in the design of computer programs, emphasizing the crucial role of abstraction. The goal of the course is to give students…

Introduction to Computational Linguistics and Natural-language Processing - Fall 2020

Professor Stuart Shieber Natural-language-processing applications are ubiquitous: Alexa can set a reminder if…

Abstraction and Design in Computation - Spring 2020

Professor Stuart Shieber Fundamental concepts in the design of computer…

Human-Computer Communication through Natural, Graphical, and Artificial Languages - Fall 2019

Professor Stuart Shieber For more information about this course, visit the

Curricular Design for Computer Science: Computational Linguistics and Natural-language Processing - Fall 2019

Professor Stuart Shieber This graduate seminar focuses on the design of a curriculum and…

Introduction to Computer Science II - Spring 2019

Topics include functional and object-oriented styles of programming, software engineering in the small, and models of computation.

Linguistics 287: Topics in Computational Linguistics and Natural Language Processing  Spring 2015

This term, the course will focus on synchronous grammars and their use for formal modeling of the semantics of natural language, including background on Montague grammar,…

Computer Science 187: Computational Linguistics – Fall 2014

Watson is the world Jeopardy champion. Siri responds accurately to "Should I bring an umbrella tomorrow?". How do they work? This course provides an introduction to the field of…

Computer Science 323: Human-Computer Communication through Natural, Graphical, and Artificial Languages

Human-Computer Communication through Natural, Graphical, and Artificial Languages


Events

Event
Oct 23, 2012 @ 12:30 PM

How to Make Your Research Open Access (Whether You're at Harvard or Not)

Celebrating Open Access Week

How do you make your own work open access (OA)? The question comes up from researchers at schools with good OA policies (like Harvard and MIT) and at schools with no OA policies…

Event
Sep 11, 2012 @ 6:00 PM

Open Access Book Launch

Peter Suber tells us what open access is and isn’t, how it benefits authors and readers of research, how we pay for it, how it avoids copyright problems, how it has moved from the…

Apr 18, 2007 @ 1:16 AM

Why Don't Scholars Provide Open Access to Their Articles?

Stuart Shieber, Berkman Faculty Director

If open access to the scholarly literature is a Good Thing for the individual scholars and for society as a whole. Why do scholars not make their articles available through open…