John DeNero is an Associate Teaching Professor in Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Giancarlo Teaching Fellow in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS). He joined the Berkeley faculty in 2014 to focus on undergraduate education in computer science and data science, following a tenure as Senior Research Scientist at Google Inc., where he contributed to Google Translate and natural language processing from 2010 to 2014. DeNero holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from UC Berkeley (2010, advised by Dan Klein), a Master of Arts in Philosophy from Stanford University (2002), and a Bachelor of Science in Mathematical and Computational Science and Symbolic Systems from Stanford University (2001, with distinction). His research centers on natural language processing, including interactive AI-based systems to assist professional translators, and computer science education, emphasizing large-scale delivery of computing content. He is affiliated with the Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research Lab (BAIR).

DeNero co-developed and teaches two of the largest courses at Berkeley: CS 61A, The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (serving approximately 3,000 students per year), and Data 8, Foundations of Data Science (1,500 students per year). He authored the online textbook Composing Programs (2013) and co-authored Computational and Inferential Thinking: The Foundations of Data Science (2016, with Ani Adhikari and David Wagner). Notable publications include "Painless Unsupervised Learning with Features" (Berg-Kirkpatrick et al., 2010, 293 citations), "Supervised Learning of Complete Morphological Paradigms" (Durrett and DeNero, 2013, 168 citations), "Interleaving Computational and Inferential Thinking: Data Science for Undergraduates at Berkeley" (Adhikari, DeNero, and Jordan, Harvard Data Science Review, 2021), and "Automatic Correction of Human Translations" (Lin et al., NAACL, 2022, Best New Resource award). His contributions to teaching have earned him the UC Berkeley Distinguished Teaching Award (2018), Jim and Donna Gray Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching of Computer Science (2017), Diane S. McEntyre Award (2016), Tau Beta Pi Outstanding Faculty of the Year (2015), Giancarlo Teaching Fellowship (2017), and UC Berkeley Achievement Award (2026). DeNero has served in leadership roles such as Faculty Director for Data Science Undergraduate Studies (2023–present), Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies in the Division of Computing, Data Science, and Society (2021–2023), Vice Chair for Undergraduate Matters in EECS and CS, and chair of the EECS Data Science Degree Committee. He has also contributed to conference organization, including demonstration chair for NAACL 2016 and area chair for EMNLP 2016.

Professional Email: denero@berkeley.edu