John Wikswo

In the first two decades of the 21st century, Wikswo's research has emphasized the development and application of micro- and nano-scale devices for instrumenting and controlling single cells. In 2001 he founded the Vanderbilt Institute for Integrative Biosystems Research and Education (VIIBRE) to foster and enhance interdisciplinary research in the biophysical sciences and bioengineering at Vanderbilt. Wikswo refocused his research on systems biology, building microfabricated devices for measuring cellular properties and developing mathematical models of cellular signaling. He has designed organ-on-a-chip devices containing small populations of cells to fill the gaps between cell cultures and animals models, for use in pharmacology and toxicology. This work led to a second R&D 100 Award for the MultiWell MicroFormulator, which delivers and removes cell culture media to each of the 96 wells of a microwell plate for toxicology research.

In the 1990s, Wikswo began developing high spatial resolution SQUID magnetometers for mapping the magnetic field, to use in both biomagnetic studies and in non-destructive testing. As is characteristic of Wikswo's work, he simultaneously developed theoretical methods to image a two-dimensional current density distribution from magnetic field measurements.

One of Wikswo's most important contributions to science is his work in cardiac electrophysiology. In 1987 he began collaborating with doctors at the Vanderbilt Medical School, including Dan Roden, to study electrical propagation in the dog heart. These studies led to the discovery of the virtual cathode effect in cardiac tissue: during electrical stimulation, the action potential wave front originated farther from the electrode in the direction perpendicular to the myocardial fibers than in the direction parallel to them.

In 1977 he became an assistant professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Vanderbilt University, where he set up a laboratory to study living state physics. In 1980, he made the first measurement of the magnetic field of an isolated nerve, by threading the a frog sciatic nerve through a wire-wound, ferrite-core toroid and detecting the induced current using a SQUID magnetometer. At the same time, Wikswo and Ken Swinney calculated the magnetic field of a nerve axon. This work was followed a few years later by the first detailed comparison of the measured and calculated magnetic field produced by a single nerve axon.

In the 1970s, Wikswo was a graduate student at Stanford University, where he worked under physicist William M. Fairbank, studying magnetocardiography.

John Peter Wikswo, Jr. (born October 6, 1949) is a biological physicist at Vanderbilt University. He was born in Lynchburg, Virginia, United States.