The Department of Linguistics is proud to celebrate the accomplishments of our alumni. We are delighted to share that Tim Chou (PhD Linguistics, 2013) was recently promoted to Full Professor in the Department of Foreign Languages & Literatures at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University in Taiwan.
After graduating from the University of Michigan in 2013, Tim has focused his research on the syntax and semantics of Mandarin Chinese. Reflecting on his time at Michigan, he recalls with gratitude the support and mentorship he received from the faculty, especially Acrisio Pires and the late Samuel Epstein, whose generous guidance extended from formal advising meetings to informal hallway conversations. He also deeply values the cross-disciplinary training he received at the University of Michigan. This distinctive graduate experience has enabled him to pursue comparative syntax and semantics, particularly with Vietnamese, as well as a neuro-symbolic approach to natural language processing as a complementary research direction—both of which have played an integral role in his promotion.
