Lots of homework and presentations and exams are personalized. Dr Derda really wants his students to learn how and be comfortable giving presentations. There is a lot of information given but he does a good job at summarizing most of the papers discussed in class.

What is chemical biology? Methods and tools of chemical biology, applications of it and lots and lots of papers about it and it's discoveries.

He is pretty chill, gives lots of homework but gives acceptable amounts of time to complete it. He's also really good at explaining things, he's able to use simple metaphors to explain insanely complicated topics. I honestly am super interested and engaged throughout the whole lecture and his metaphors really stick with you and help things make sense. He can be disorganized but his lectures are a 10/10. His slides can be intimidating though as he sometimes puts a ton of info on slides, but he discusses what matters and often just adds papers in case you want to do more reading on your own :)

That participation plays an enormous part! Get ready to make friends with your peers as I think he likes group presentations