Latest News

• Accepted by the Computer Science Ph.D. program at University of Wisconsin Madison with full tuition waiver and stipends, Fall 2020
• First-authored a paper with Dr. Peilong Li to be published by IEEE International Conference on Communications, 7-11 June 2020
• 2x Google Cloud First Team Academic All-America® (Baseball - 2018, 2019)
• Nathaniel Hager Jr Memorial Scholar (2016, 2017, 2018)
• Recognized for academic achievement within the engineering department
• Clark Associates, Inc. $5000 Leadership and Entrepreneurship Scholarship (2017)
• Emergent Scholar (2017)
• Achieving cumulative GPA higher than 3.75 after first three semesters

Quotes from Derek

“The summer I spent working in the ADAL lab was by far the most impactful experience I had at Elizabethtown. Working closely with Dr. Li, I was able to progress from having zero experience in an applied research area, to developing the skills to have a significant impact as a member of the research team. The 10-week experience provided me with the foundation to apply and gain admittance to the highly competitive PhD program of the University of Wisconsin Computer Science department, which is one of the fastest growing CS departments in the country. When visiting the campus to meet with professors, I pulled heavily from my summer research experience during the conversations to make a strong first impression on the faculty.”

“Even though I was also an athlete, I was still able to take part in the research opportunity. I think in general athletes that are also very good students may be hesitant in engaging in such activities because they think they will not have enough time to engage in training and also full time research, which I found was definitely not true at Etown.”