Derek graduated from Reed in 2007 with a license to run the Reed nuclear reactor and a BA in Chemistry/Physics, but three years later he had placed his feet on entirely different path: studying for a MD/PhD in the Genomics and Computational Biology program at U. Pennsylvania. Derek just wrote to us the other day with all kinds of news, personal and professional.
The personal first. Derek passed along the very happy news that he, and his companion of 9 years, Olivia (BA Physics, Reed & PhD & postdoc Physics, U Penn), are engaged to get married. I don’t know if a date has been set, but we wish them every happiness. Special kudos to Derek for being brave enough to make his proposal in front of a hall filled with fellow Timber Ridge campers of all ages. Derek told the assembled how he began his courting of Olivia by coaxing her to the Reed nuclear reactor to view the Cherenkov radiation which, of course, raises this question: how many Reed couples have found romance watching the reactor’s blue glow? One of the Timber Ridge campers filmed the proposal and posted it to YouTube.
Adding to Derek and Olivia’s joy is the success that Derek has found as an MD/PhD student at U. Penn. Derek has just completed the PhD part of his training under the supervision of Dr. John Maris, U. Pennsylvania Medical School & Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. This research resulted in two first-author papers for Derek in Nature and Nature Genetics and also the 2015 International Schweisguth Prize. This prize is given out by the International Society of Paediatric Oncology (SIOP) to “the author of the best scientific article by a trainee in the field of paedatric oncology.” A less technical explanation of the research can be found in the PR Newswire blog: “Change in a Single DNA Base Drives a Childhood Cancer.”
Of course, all this hard work represents only one half of Derek’s program. In his email, he says, “I’ve recently returned to clinics with an anticipated MD graduation date of May 2017. I’m leaning toward a residency in pathology and trying to expedite my return to the laboratory, hoping to continue to focus my research and clinical work on pediatric cancer.”