Joseph Phillips: Where music, math and nature meet

Joseph Phillips is a man of many talents and passions, which is reflected in Joe’s childhood dreams of either becoming a chef, a veterinarian or studying prehistoric events as a palaeontologist. His love for nature and math won in the end, leading him to study biology.  He first came to Iceland as a PhD student to study the midges of Lake Mývatn, and when a post-doctoral research position on Lake Mývatn opened up, he took the opportunity and moved to Iceland. After all, his favourite season was winter, but after three years in Iceland, summer has grown on him. 

During his time in Iceland, he was part of a group of researchers in the department of Aquaculture and Fish Biology at the University of Hólar. Here Joe began his research on the natural predator of the midges, threespine stickleback. Specifically, Joe studies how other species affect the stickleback population throughout space and time. Especially the close link between midges and stickleback in Lake Mývatn has sparked his interest. 

The number of midges that emerge every year from Lake Mývatn can change dramatically. So what happens in years when there are only a few midges for the stickleback to eat? How does midge density impact stickleback body and population size? Are the patterns the same across the lake and across years? These are only a couple of the questions that Joe is trying to answer with the support of his co-workers and many students he has supervised over the years. 

Joe is truly a team player, be it at work or when he plays board games in his free time. Especially the local dungeons and dragons’ group of Hólar misses his talents as a skilled dungeon master. But his team spirit was clear from an early age, when he started to play the tuba in different musical groups, and he continues to do so until today. His love for music is also why he connected so deeply with math. The patterns that unfold and repeat over time can be found in music as well as in math. 

For Joe, the recipe to a happy and balanced life is to “find the intersection between what you are interested in and what you are good at” and to “do what you want, not what you think people want you to do”. By following his own advice, Joe has built a wonderful space for himself back in his hometown of Omaha, Nebraska USA, where he holds a position as an assistant professor at Creighton University. There he gets to teach and mentor young students whilst keeping up the research projects that are dear to him. In the future, he hopes to expand into more local projects and to strengthen the local research outreach. We hope to hear about his exciting new adventures sometime soon over a craft beer at the beer club in Hólar, like we used to.