Joshua Brody

Joshua Brody is an Associate Professor in the Computer Science Department at Swarthmore College, where he has been faculty since 2014. His research focuses on theoretical computer science, particularly communication complexity and its applications to algorithms, data structures, and property testing. He holds a Ph.D. from Dartmouth College (2010), with postdoctoral work at Tsinghua University and Aarhus University. Brody has taught courses such as Data Structures and Algorithms, Competitive Programming, and Theory of Computation. His work spans over 30 publications in top conferences like CCC, FOCS, and SODA, and he has secured grants including a Danish Council research award. He advises undergraduate researchers and coaches the Swarthmore ICPC programming team.

Education:

• Ph.D., Computer Science, Dartmouth College (2010)
• M.S., Computer Science, New York University (2005)
• B.S., Mathematics/Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University (1997)

Research Interests: Brody’s work emphasizes lower bounds in communication complexity, query complexity, and their implications for streaming algorithms, data structures, and cryptographic protocols. He explores how communication constraints influence computational efficiency and has developed techniques to derive impossibility results across domains.

Grants & Awards: Notable funding includes a Lower Bounds via Communication Complexity grant from the Danish Council (2011–2013) and the Eugene M. Lang Faculty Fellowship (2018). His work bridges foundational theory and practical applications, such as anomaly detection in streams and secure multiparty computation.

Teaching: Brody has taught foundational courses like CS 35 (Data Structures) and specialized topics such as Cryptogenography and Randomized Algorithms. His courses emphasize competitive programming and algorithmic problem-solving.