Dr. Derick Wood was a Professor in the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo from 1982 to 1992.
He is widely known for his outstanding research contributions in a number of areas in theoretical Computer Science, including algorithms, data structures, formal languages and computational geometry. Dr. Wood received his B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Leeds, England, in 1963 and 1968, respectively. He was an Assistant Research Scientist at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University before joining the Department of Applied Mathematics at McMaster University in 1970. After his appointment at Waterloo, he was a Professor at the University of Western Ontario until 1994 and from 1995 until his retirement in 2006 he was a Chair Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. In 1996, with Derick's NSERC Strategic Grant, he and Dr. Darrell Raymond, the Grail Project Manager, cofounded Workshop on Implementing Automata later was renamed to International Conference on Implementation and Application of Automata.
This fund is made possible by the donations of family, friends, and colleagues in memory of Dr. Wood. In memory of Dr. Derick Wood, the University of Waterloo has established the Dr. Derick Wood Endowment for Graduate Scholarships in Computer Science in order to receive gifts honouring Dr. Wood.