His masters thesis was The Long Range Dispersion of Radioactive Particulates and his doctoral dissertation was Forcing Mechanisms of Thunderstorm Downdrafts.

He and the Doppler On Wheels (DOW) facility, updated as the Flexible Array of Radars and Mesonets (FARM) are currently affiliated with the University of Alabama-Huntsville [2].

Joshua Wurman participated in both the VORTEX projects, doing early deployments of the first scraped together DOW radars for VORTEX1 and served on the steering committee and was a principal investigator (PI) for VORTEX2, the field research phase of which occurred from 2009-2010.

He authored an article in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society analyzing the potential impacts of a major tornado passing through urban areas.

[9] He authored an article linking DOW-mapped Hurricane Tornado-Scale Vortices (TSV) to extreme wind gusts and damage [10] Wurman and his team developed the DOW radars, a new concept of mobile radar, used to observe tornadoes, tropical cyclones, wildfires,[11] winter storms, and other phenomena from close range.

His scientific work and DOW projects are largely sponsored by NSF, as well as National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the United States Forest Service (USFS), the United States Department of Energy (DOE), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and other agencies of the U.S. government, as well as by The Discovery Channel, and the National Geographic Society, among others.

[citation needed] He was also featured on National Geographic Channel's Tornado Intercept and The True Face of Hurricanes, as well as in the IMAX film Forces of Nature.