William Schuler, a professor in the Department of Linguistics, was elevated from interim chair to full-time chair of the department, with a term that started July 1, 2024. 

Schuler’s areas of interest are in building and evaluating computational models of cognitive processes involved in parsing and interpreting speech and text. He earned a BA in English Literature and a BS in Computer Science from the University of Michigan before completing his MS and PhD in Computer and Information Science from the University of Pennsylvania. 

He received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) in 2005 while he was a faculty member at the University of Minnesota, for integrating word-recognition and semantic interpretation into a unified model for natural language dialogue between people and computers.