Derek currently teaches into two engineering majors (mechatronic and agricultural engineering) as well as the Bachelor of Agricultural Technology & Management.
Bachelor of Agricultural Technology & Management
Derek is course coordinator for two software courses in which students learn about current state-of-the-art in agricultural smart sensing covering both aerial and ground-based platforms. They also get a strong foundation in electronics, software, and particularly GenAI, and then apply those skills through the use of microcontollers, weather stations, and IoT sensors.
In the second course, students will be pushed to reach further and take on tasks in machine learning, advanced data management, and front-end/back-end web design.
Agricultural Engineering
In agricultural engineering, Derek runs two courses designed to make students effective at coding their own tools and solutions through GenAI. Students get a grasp of object detection models that underpin things like weed spot spraying, and connect it through to machine control.
Australia is on a journey towards precision agriculture, and the sector’s future depends on having digitally literate graduates. The software experience that our agricultural engineering students now have in their study will equip them to work with the machines, sensing systems, and data management systems of the future.
Mechatronic Engineering
In 2026, Derek returned to teaching in his home major of mechatronics, revitalising the machine vision course in the major, and bringing a real-world feel to the assessments in the course. In the revamped course, students get a solid foundation in traditional machine vision (OpenCV), object detection through the ultralytics library, and other machine learning through scikit-learn.
The course finishes with a look at algorithm deployment and code optimisation for real-time performance, as well as algorithm design in industrial applications.
Learning and Teaching Awards
After a strong start in 2022 and 2023 with integrating GenAI into AgTech courses, in 2024 Derek received the UniSQ Excellence Award for University Learning and Teaching. It is the highest internal L&T award within the university, and was awarded not only for its impact on AgTech students, but for the efforts made to increase uptake of effective and appropriate GenAI teaching across the university.
Two national awards followed shortly after, the 2025 RUN group Learning & Teaching Awards (3rd place), and the 2026 Australasian University Agriculture Education Award for Excellence in Teaching.
