Dr. John Swegle works as an independent consultant through the National Strategic Research Institute at the University of Nebraska on issues related to the effects of nuclear weapons and proliferation on US national security. Immediately prior to that, he was a Senior Advisory Scientist at the Savannah River National Laboratory in Aiken, South Carolina. He began his career at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he was a member of the plasma theory group, and then moved to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where he conducted and managed analyses of foreign technology and nuclear programs in what was then Z Division; he also worked in a nuclear design division for several years where he was introduced to the basic concepts of nuclear design and nuclear-driven electromagnetic pulse.

He is a graduate of Cornell University, where he obtained an MS and PhD in applied physics with a specialty in plasma physics, and the University of Washington in Seattle, where he earned BSEE and MSEE degrees.

Dr. Swegle has also had a long career in the field of high-power microwaves. He is the co-author of High-Power Microwaves, which has been published in three editions. The book has become an international standard and has been translated into Chinese. He served as an Associate Editor of The Physics of Plasmas and co-edited a special issue of the IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science devoted to high-power microwaves.

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