Derek Orbaugh

Derek Orbaugh is currently working for the Biomimetics Laboratory as a postdoc researcher. He was born in Guatemala City, Guatemala, in 1990. He received a B.S. degree in electronics engineering from the Universidad del Valle de Guatemala, Guatemala City, in 2015, and an M.S. degree in smart systems from Furtwangen University, Furtwangen, Germany, in 2017. In 2023, he was awarded a Ph.D. degree from the University of Auckland in Bioengineering with the Biomimetics Laboratory. For his research he developed a smart dive glove for underwater diver communication. The glove is capable of recognizing hand gestures used in diving communication, convert them into a message and transmit the message acoustically. He has authored and co-authored three conference proceedings and four journal articles.