Alumni | 3/28/2019 11:49:00 AM

FLUSHING, N.Y. (Mar. 28, 2019) - Imagine waking up on a February morning in New York City. For much of us, it is a thought that has not only happened recently but also draws much ire and scorn in that we wish to not think about it until next February. Regardless, if one was to wake up on a February morning in New York City and gaze outside of our windows to see snow falling, what would our first thoughts be? Would we mutter and moan as we went back to sleep, hoping the snow would go away and pushing off shoveling until later in the day? Would we anxiously check our phones or the television to see if our offices or schools were closed?

For Dr. Elisee (Eli) Joseph '15, the wintry weather on a February morning as described last year gave him a different question to ponder: "How is my stock portfolio doing?"

And with that, the Queens College men's basketball and track alumnus set out on a mission that ultimately took him through last Wednesday (Mar. 20) when he would defend a doctoral dissertation at Felician University successfully. Thus, Dr. Joseph became the school's first graduate of the DBA program at the New Jersey institution...at the age of 24.

"If you had told me that I would be a professor by the age of 22 and have a doctorate degree by the age of 24," Dr. Joseph recalled, "I would not have believed you."

He had come to Queens College after transferring from Siena and been a member of the Knights' basketball team for the 2013-14 season. Though he played sparingly for the Knights on the hardwood, he would later join the QC track and field team and be part of the program's 2014 ECC Outdoor Track and Field championship. In his time with the Knights, Joseph would win four All-ECC accolades in total: he was a 2014 all-conference honoree as part of the 4x100-meter relay; in 2015, he won all-conference laurels in the 4x200-meter relay on the indoor side and took home All-ECC titles in the 110-meter hurdles and 400-meter hurdles.
 

Joseph then pursued a master's degree in business administration at Brooklyn College, which only took him one year to complete. While he was racking up degrees, he also spent time working as a professor at Marymount College of Manhattan while pursuing a Google Developer Challenge Scholarship and enrolling in the Harvard CORe (Credential of Readiness) program for business. While at Marymount, and additionally at Columbia University, Joseph was named a Forbes Under 30 Scholar which continued his meteoric rise through the world of academia.
 

At the same time, he became a member of the Grammy Recording Academy and took up a position at Queens College as an economics professor. Then came the TEDx Talk at Syracuse University, Dr. Joseph's star turn, in which he discussed the idea of determining team success without the use of a scoreboard. But it was that one February morning in 2018 that was the whim and random bit of introspection that brought Dr. Joseph to his doctoral dissertation. His idea was a full-scale research model in how weather patterns affected investor sentiment and thus how they would affect the stock market. "How," Dr. Joseph posited, "would a 49-degree day that is sunny and cold affect the rise or fall of the S&P 500 index?"

From June 2018 through this past January, Dr. Joseph conducted his research. By tracking weather patterns and major natural occurrences (i.e. hurricanes, tornadoes et al.), he was able to find assess a wide range of instances and match up market performances to the weather at hand. Dr. Joseph admitted that the results comprised of a "significant correlation" between weather events and market outputs, yet the overall impact of the correlation was marginal---anywhere between a negative-one and a positive-one scale. Undeterred, Dr. Joseph conducted an investors' survey to measure the psychological impact of weather occurrences on how likely they were to buy or sell their stocks. From there, his research took him to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) and StockTrak---a global portfolio simulator and trading room software entity.

The toughest part of the dissertation process, Dr. Joseph admitted, was not the actual defense of the disseration itself. "Getting Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval," he stated, "was the most difficult along with the data collection itself." However, he proved himself and got approval for his dissertation---entitled "The Examination of Investor Sentiment, Weather Patterns and Stock Returns"---and readied his defense to a panel that included Dr. David Turi, Felician's Associate Dean of the program, and Columbia University lecturer Mark Ritzmann in addition to Purdue University professor William Okrekpie.

To be the first at something as well as one of the youngest people in the world with such an advanced degree, as Dr. Joseph admits, is a testament to the lessons he has learned everywhere he has gone. Specifically, his time as a student-athlete at Queens College is part of what he recalls most fondly. As Dr. Joseph looks ahead to more opportunities in data science and academia, he recalls the traits and pillars of wisdom that he obtained as a member of the Knights' family.

"The staff at Queens College," Dr. Joseph concluded, "instilled a passion for excellence in me and focused on students first. Their lessons have been what has carried over for me into obtaining these degrees and pursuing further opportunities within these fields. They are lessons that I use to better teach and inspire my students, and they are tools that I will continue to use as I go further with what I have already learned."