Neurotech Beat

Dr. John Wikswo is a biological physicist from Vanderbilt University. He earned his Ph.D. in Physics from Stanford University in 1975, prior to working as a postdoctoral Research Fellow in Cardiology at Stanford. Shortly after, he joined the faculty at Vanderbilt University in the Department of Physics. Early in his career, he and his colleagues made the first measurements of the magnetic field of a single axon fiber. Dr. Wikswo has contributed extensively to biophysics, cardiac electrophysiology, magnetometer engineering, systems biology, and more. In this interview, he chronologically outlines many of the highlights from his ongoing scientific career.

Link to his 2013 TEDx talk detailing his work building homunculi and organs-on-a-chip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ht3m6p8iZ0&t=471s

Google Scholar profile of Dr. Wikswo: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=JnedIZ0AAAAJ&hl=en

Dr. Michael Bess is an author and Chancellor's Professor of History at Vanderbilt University. He completed his undergraduate studies in philosophy at Reed College in 1979 and earned a doctorate in history from UC Berkeley in 1989. At Vanderbilt University, Dr. Bess has written and taught extensively on 20th- and 21st-century Europe, environmentalism, and human bioenhancement.

In this interview, Dr. Bess and I explore his thoughts on WWII, human evil, morality, ethics, his interview with Michel Foucault, bioenhancement, and much more. It was a treat for me to engage a historian with such a keen eye for the past, present, and future.

Dr. Bess' personal website, which includes details of his books, his Foucault interview, and more: https://michaelbess.net/

Amazon link to his first published book (1993): Realism, Utopia, and the Mushroom Cloud: Four Activist Intellectuals and their Strategies for Peace, 1945-1989

Amazon link to his second published book (2003): The Light-Green Society: Ecology and Technological Modernity in France, 1960-2000

Amazon link to this third published book (2006): Choices Under Fire: Moral Dimensions of World War II

Amazon link to his fourth published book (2015): Our Grandchildren Redesigned: Life in the Bioengineered Society of the Near Future

Gregory Welch, PhD, a computer scientist and a 2020 UCF Pegasus Professor, is the AdventHealth Endowed Chair in Healthcare Simulation in the UCF College of Nursing, Co-director of the UCF Synthetic Reality Laboratory, and a Professor of Computer Science, Modeling & Simulation.

Dr. Welch studied electrical engineering at Purdue and went on to obtain a PhD under Dr. Gary Bishop at UNC Chapel Hill. During his doctoral work, he published an internationally-recognized technical report titled, "An Introduction to the Kalman Filter," which can be found on his personally-maintained website dedicated to the Kalman Filter.

As he speaks about at length in this episode, prior to his PhD, Dr. Welch worked on the Voyager Spacecraft Project at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He wrote software for both Voyager spacecraft and notably wrote onboard memory saving software during Voyager II's Neptune encounter, enabling additional planetary imaging. Much of the software he wrote for the spacecraft still operate to this day.

Dr. Welch has applied his expertise in computer science to aerospace, defense, simulation & training, healthcare, and much more. His passion for engineering systems that have real-world applications is inspiring. Much of his recent work at UCF is dedicated to nursing simulation and training, perhaps topics for another interview.

William DeCampli, MD, PhD, a pediatric cardiac surgeon, is Chief of Pediatric Cardiac Surgery and Co-Director of the Heart Center at Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children in Orlando, FL. He also serves as Professor of Surgery at the UCF College of Medicine. Dr. DeCampli is also Managing Director of the Data Center of the Congenital Heart Surgeons Society, which is located at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto.

As this interview explores, Dr. DeCampli has been a success in a multitude of fields. In 1978 he earned his PhD in Astrophysics from Harvard University, where he studied the evolution of giant gaseous protoplanets. He then completed a postdoc at California Institute of Technology as a Weizmann Research Fellow in Astrophysics. In 1984 he was selected to NASA's Group 10 astronaut candidate finalists.

In an inspiring career change, Dr. DeCampli then took on medical school at University of Miami. He then went on to Stanford for residency in cardiothoracic surgery followed by a fellowship in congenital cardiac surgery at UCSF. His recent research works involve applying computational fluid dynamics and photonics to problems in congenital heart disease.

Dr. DeCampli has a passion for science and medical education. As his story demonstrates, it is never too late to change course in your career. I hope you enjoy hearing his story as much as I did.