Professor Derksen is originally from northern Alberta (a little over 1000 km north of Calgary). He completed his undergraduate Honours Chemistry degree in 2003 at the University of Alberta (Edmonton, AB). Then moving on to complete his PhD in the lab of Professor John C. Vederas at the same institution in 2008 working on the synthesis and evaluation of antimicrobial peptides and new synthetic methods. Professor Derksen then completed an Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research (AHFMR) postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Cambridge in the lab of Professor Ian Paterson working on the total synthesis of peloruside A. Darren began his independent career at one of Canada's top primarily undergraduate institutions, St. Francis Xavier University on the east Coast of Canada (Antigonish, NS) in 2010 and then moved to the University of Calgary in 2014 to take up the Alberta Children's Hospital Foundation Junior Chair in Medicinal Chemistry. Dr. Derksen was promoted to Associate Professor (with tenure) in 2018 and then to Full Professor in 2023. The Derksen research lab has been been supported with funding from the NSERC Discovery and NSERC Collaborative Research and Development grants, the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the Alberta Children's Hospital Foundation, and collaborative grants from CIHR, and the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation. The Derksen lab is integrated into multidisciplinary research institutes at the University of Calgary including the Alberta Children's Hospital Research Institute, the Arnie Charbonneau Cancer Institute, and the Hotchkiss Brain Institute.