2022: Summer
This summer, Derrick was selected as a graduate mentor for the IB Summer Undergraduate Research Experience. He served as a mentor for recent Minerva University graduate, Adeena Ahsan, who helped him on the UCMP's Red Hill locality fossil fishes. Derrick and Adeena created a repository for all relevant Red Hill data, including digital scans of field notes, locality card information, and fossil occurrence data. They also contributed to the CalPhotos website by photographing hundreds of placoderm and osteichthyan fish fragments. Alongside their curatorial work, they processed multiple fossiliferous limestone slabs from previous Red Hill fieldwork through acid preparation. They utilized their repository of Red Hill specimen photos to identify these newly prepared fossils. At the end of the mentorship, Derrick and Adeena visited the Field Museum to compare the Red Hill locality specimens with the placoderms and osteichthyans from Scaumenac Bay in Quebec. Through CT scan observations of the Field Museum specimens, Derrick was able to distinguish varying lateral line canal morphologies between the UCMP and Field Museum specimens, advancing his own research progress.
2019: New Faculty Profiles
https://ib.berkeley.edu/newsletter/fall-2019/new-faculty-profiles
2018: Liu Has New Fossil Hamster Species Named in Her Honor
https://medicine.buffalo.edu/news_and_events/news/2018/05/liu-new-hamste...