STRIDE Student in the Spotlight - Joshua Comden
Joshua Comden
Applied Math & Statistics
Research Advisor: Zhenhua Liu
Joshua Comden is a fourth-year PhD student in the department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics and is also a recipient of the STRIDE Fellowship. The Science Training and Research to Inform DEcisions (STRIDE) program was quickly recognized by Joshua as a great catalyst to promoting a career in decision analytics.
Joshua, who graduated from the University of Delaware in 2009 with a Bachelor of Science in chemical engineering, soon discovered that he did not want a career in engineering after all. He realized that the creative elements of chemical engineering that he had been taught in school would most likely never be utilized in the day to day applications of the profession. At this point, he made the decision to learn a new language—Portuguese—and traveled to Brazil, where he lived for two years teaching English as a second language.
Inspired by his grandfather who holds a Master’s in Mathematics, Joshua decided to
pursue a PhD in math with the intentions of launching a career in academia. A career
in industry, at first regarded as his “Plan B” career, has now become Joshua’s ultimate
career goal. Finding Operations Research appealing, he is now forging ahead in his
pursuit of working in management consulting as a data science consultant, translating
data to provide the answers to the questions within industry. 
Recently, Joshua had the opportunity to present his research at the annual INFORMS meeting, which is the world’s largest professional association dedicated to operations research, management science, and analytics to improve operational processes, decision-making, and outcomes. His talk on demand response programs explores the concept of going against the expected supply-to-meet-demand model, and moving towards a demand to meet the volatile supply.
While at the INFORMS meeting, Joshua had an opportunity to engage in informational
interviews, a concept that he had learned about through the PhD Career Ladder Program
(PCLP), a student-led career development group funded by NSF through the Integration
of Research, Education, and Professional Development (IREP) office. Upon interviewing
an individual working in his chosen field, he was able to come away with three pages
of notes and additional introductions to other professionals. Through his successful
networking, Joshua hopes to obtain an internship placement in the summer of 2018.
Joshua is committed to using his knowledge to effect real change in the world. He is interested in becoming involved with pro-bono analytics in the future, which affords worthy groups and organizations access to first-class data consultants typically hired by leaders in the industry. He is also actively involved with civic organizations and is interested in the power structure of local politics.