Winner 2001 Katherine Palmer Award - Paleontological Research Institute

Winner 2021 Charles Sternberg Medal - Association of Applied Paleontological Science

He began to develop his fossil collection and subsequent search for knowledge as a young boy growing up in the fossil-rich Niagara Falls area.

He has been privileged to be a keynote speaker and 27-time Guest Lecturer at the Greater Detroit Rock and Mineral Exposition. He has also lectured at Michigan State University, St. Clair Community College, Wayne State University, University of Michigan and Missouri Science and Technical University.

He also was the Director of the Hall of Ideas Museum in Michigan before he left to establish a museum exhibit development company and continue fossil collecting.

Joseph is the curator and developer of 3 Natural History Fossil Exhibits. He has displayed fossil expositions at Museums across the Midwest one of which is called Trilobite Treasures: Arthropods of the Ancients Seas that is currently touring the United States. It is the largest and most comprehensive exhibit describing those ancient creatures once so plentiful that the Cambrian Period was called the age of Trilobites. The exhibit contains over 200 actual specimens and artifacts.

In 2011 he constructed two more traveling exhibits, Fossils of the Great Lakes Basin, and Dinolab. These exhibits are currently traveling around museums and Nature Centers across the Midwest.