Janis Melvold (melvold@mit.edu)

Janis Melvold (Ph.D., Linguistics, MIT) is a Lecturer in the Program in Writing, Rhetoric, and Professional Communication. She teaches in the First Year Writing Program, as well as in communication-intensive courses in both the humanities and sciences/engineering. Prior to joining the writing and communications program at MIT, she served as a Lecturer in the Harvard Graduate School of Education, teaching courses on linguistics and reading, and served as Co-Principal Investigator on a long-term research project investigating language disorders in the Dept. of Neurology at Mass. General Hospital/Harvard Medical School. Her work has been published in Cortex, Brain and Language, and Aphasiology, as well as the Boston Globe. Her current research interests involve connections between linguistics and writing. Her teaching interests lie especially in the realm of science writing—in helping students discover the joys of writing through writing about the areas of science and engineering they’re most passionate about.