{"id":71322,"date":"2025-10-14T08:38:40","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T12:38:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogarchive.utc.edu\/news\/?p=71322"},"modified":"2025-10-20T08:15:13","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T12:15:13","slug":"from-interest-to-innovation-joshua-tyler-built-a-ph-d-career-from-curiosity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogarchive.utc.edu\/news\/2025\/10\/from-interest-to-innovation-joshua-tyler-built-a-ph-d-career-from-curiosity\/","title":{"rendered":"From interest to innovation: Joshua Tyler built a Ph.D. career from curiosity"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Joshua

Eight years after arriving at UTC, Dr. Joshua H. Tyler now holds three degrees from the University and has transitioned into a postdoctoral researcher and faculty role. Photo by Angela Foster.<\/p><\/div>\n

When Dr. Joshua H. Tyler first walked onto the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga campus in fall 2017, he didn\u2019t set out to become a scientist.<\/p>\n

He just wanted to make music.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought I\u2019d be in and out, get my degree and then go out in the world and\u2014not necessarily a desk job\u2014but work a regular 9-to-5,\u201d said Tyler, who recently earned a Ph.D. in computational engineering from UTC. \u201cBut as I got more interested in electrical engineering, it started to become less than just a job to me.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were a lot of times where I stayed up late at night working on something, not because I have to, but just because I\u2019m interested in the actual research. I remember one time where I accidentally spent a few hours optimizing the InfiniBand communication between GPU nodes in our HPC cluster to get a model to train faster. I could spend that kind of time doing that kind of thing because I have been privileged enough to have the freedom to pursue the things that interest me. It just so happens to be stuff that is useful.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eight years after arriving at UTC, Tyler now holds three degrees from the University and has transitioned into a postdoctoral researcher and faculty role, continuing his work under the mentorship of Guerry and UC Foundation Professor of Electrical Engineering Don Reising. He previously earned a bachelor\u2019s in electrical engineering in 2020 and a master\u2019s in 2022.<\/p>\n

\u201cJosh is very driven, works very hard, and has a unique ability to learn new skills and concepts very quickly,\u201d Reising said.<\/p>\n

Originally from Chattanooga and a graduate of East Hamilton High School, Tyler transferred to UTC in 2017 after receiving an associate degree from Chattanooga State Community College.<\/p>\n

\u201cStarting here after my two-year degree, it was more than just a foot in the water about doing the whole college thing. I was thinking, \u2018This is going to require a lot more commitment than I have ever given school,\u2019\u201d Tyler recalled.<\/p>\n

He initially envisioned a career as a traveling or studio musician, but as he delved deeper into electrical engineering, everything started to click.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was always a very technical person,\u201d he said. \u201cEven with the music side of it, I was more into the audio production\u2014 I enjoyed actually looking at the gears and the levers that made audio happen in a digital sense. My background in audio engineering really acted as a bridge to help me make it in electrical engineering. There were a lot of similar concepts, especially with digital signal processing.\u201d<\/p>\n

By his senior year, he had decided to pursue a master\u2019s degree, with the idea that a Ph.D. might follow.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs I\u2019ve transitioned more into research, I stuck my nose down and I get working and I got busy,\u201d he explained. \u201cIt gets easier over time to commit more to an academic life.\u201d<\/p>\n

That passion has translated into an impressive research portfolio spanning signal processing, audio technology, cybersecurity and hardware resiliency. The upshot: He has already built a citation impact that many researchers don\u2019t reach for years.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you graduate with a Ph.D., typically you\u2019re not expected to have much of an h-index,\u201d Tyler said. The h-index offers a concise measure of research impact by factoring in both the number of a scholar\u2019s published works and how often those works have been cited.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now, I looked at my analytics and have an h-index of 6,\u201d he continued, \u201cso I\u2019m already starting out with a research impact equal to someone \u2026 with a Ph.D. for six years.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Joshua

Dr. Joshua H. Tyler teaches Monday, Sept. 22, in the Engineering and Computer Science building.<\/p><\/div>\n

Tyler\u2019s contributions include research in Specific Emitter Identification (SEI), a field he entered at the start of his master\u2019s degree.<\/p>\n

In SEI, researchers identify different wireless transmitters\u2014known as emitters\u2014by analyzing their unique physical waveforms. The applications range from Internet of Things (IoT) security to national defense.<\/p>\n

SEI remains the research area he\u2019s proudest of.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was the first or second week of my master\u2019s degree; I had started as a research assistant and I was given a dataset,\u201d Tyler recalled. \u201cMy advisor, Dr. Reising, wanted me to figure out a way to remove corruption from these radio signals while still being able to identify the radios. Within the first two weeks, I developed something that we were able to publish. A lot of the mathematics and processes just make inherent sense to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reising was asked how he saw Tyler\u2019s contributions impacting the field or shaping future researchers.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the long term, this primarily remains to be seen,\u201d he said. \u201cHowever, some of this is already happening in some degree through multiple inventions, 13 journal articles and conference papers as first author, eight additional journal articles and conference papers as a contributing author, as well as his mentorship of multiple undergraduate and graduate students. He has also been part of work that has transitioned to practice within the power industry.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tyler\u2019s high-level projects have included:<\/p>\n