Rate My Professor Derek Anderson

Derek T. Anderson is the Naka Endowed Professor in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Missouri-Columbia, where he serves as a tenured full professor. He earned his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering in 2010 and M.S. in Computer Science in 2005, both from the University of Missouri-Columbia, and a B.S. in Computer Science with a minor in Mathematics from Wichita State University in 2002. His career includes positions as tenured associate professor and Robert D. Guyton Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Mississippi State University from 2011 to 2017, assistant professor there from 2010 to 2011, and intermittent faculty in the Geospatial Division at the Naval Research Laboratory from 2017 to 2018. Since joining the University of Missouri as tenured associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, he advanced to full professor in 2023 and Naka Endowed Professor in 2025. Anderson directs the Mizzou INformation and Data FUsion Laboratory (MINDFUL), formed in 2018, co-directs the Center for Geospatial Intelligence (CGI), and is a core faculty member of the MU Institute for Data Science and Informatics.

Anderson's research centers on artificial intelligence and data/information fusion, encompassing computational intelligence, machine learning, signal and image processing, computer vision, remote sensing, and applications in drones and materials. He has secured approximately $40 million in funding across 30 projects from NSF, US Army ERDC, NRL, NGA, and industry partners. With over 250 publications in journals, conferences, and book chapters, his work has garnered more than 5,700 citations and an h-index of 35. Key publications include "Comprehensive survey of deep learning in remote sensing: theories, tools, and challenges for the community" (Journal of Applied Remote Sensing, 2017), "Linguistic summarization of video for fall detection using voxel person and fuzzy logic" (Computer Vision and Image Understanding, 2009), "Recognizing falls from silhouettes" (2006 IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Conference), and "Enabling explainable fusion in deep learning with fuzzy integral neural networks" (IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems, 2019). His honors include the 2023 Senior Faculty Research Award from Mizzou College of Engineering, Computational Intelligence Society Distinguished Lecturer (2023-2025), 2019 Outstanding Professor Award from the ECE Department, and best paper awards at FUZZ-IEEE 2008 and 2013. Anderson has organized domestic and international conferences, serves as Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems since 2012, and chairs the department's Promotion and Tenure Committee.