-
Dr. L. Alan Bradshaw is the Director of Gastrointestinal SQUID Tehnology Laboratory (GIST)at Vanderbilt University medical center, where he is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Surgery and the Department of Physics at Vanderbilt University. He is also chair of the Department of Physics at Lipscomb University. After obtaining his BS degree summa cum laude in 1990 from Abilene Christian University as a University Scholar, he was awarded a Ph.D. degree in physics by Vanderbilt University in 1995, where he was the recipient of a university dissertation enhancement grant. In 1996 he was awarded a Young Investigator Award by the American Motility Society for his pioneering research in the field of noninvasive biomagnetic characterization of GI diseases. He is a co-recipient of the 2006 Nightingale Prize of the Institute for Physics and Engineering in Medicine for his vector projection analysis method for biomagnetic fields. His current research interests include biomagnetic and bioelectric detection of gastrointestinal (GI) electrical activity and application of biomagnetic inverse methods to magnetic fields of the GI tract. -
Dr. William O. Richards is the Professor and Chair of Surgery at the University Of South Alabama College Of Medicine. He obtained his BS degree in biology in 1975 from Dickinson College and his MD degree from the University of Maryland School of Medicine in 1979. From 1983 to 1984 he was chief resident in general surgery at the University of Maryland Hospital, whereafter he became a fellow in portal hypertension and endoscopy at the Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia. In 1987, he completed a research fellowship in gastrointestinal (GI) physiology at VanderbiltUniversity, Nashville, TN, where he served as the Ingram Professor of Surgery at Vanderbilt School of Medicine until 2009. He has served as chairman and secretary for the Southern Medical Association and he is a member of more than 20 national and international scientific societies. Dr. Richards is a fellow of the American College of Surgeons and an acknowledged expert in the field of gastric bypass surgery and has given numerous invited lectures on laparoendoscopic surgery around the world. His current research interests include the electrophysiology of GI smooth muscle. -
Dr. John P. Wikswo is Gordon A. Cain University Professor, Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Molecular Physiology & Biophysics and Physics at Vanderbilt University. He is also the founding director of the Vanderbilt Institute for Integrative Biosystems Research and Education. He and his group are at present working in three areas: the study of the linear and non-linear electrical properties of cardiac tissue during stimulation, propagation, and recovery for threshold- and defibrillation-strength shocks; the magnetic measurement of cellular action currents in cardiac, gastric and intestinal tissue, as can be observed using SQUID magnetometry; and the development and application of micro- and nano-scale devices for instrumenting and controlling the single biological cell and small populations of cells. His long-term program to understand the effects of defibrillation-strength shocks on cardiac tissue now includes studies of charge and electroporation and molecular diffusion. The magnetic studies of action currents range from determining the information content of the magnetocardiogram in isolated rabbit hearts to the non-invasive diagnosis of intestinal ischemia in humans. The project to instrument and control single cells is addressing issues as varied as the use of cells to identify and discriminate chemical and biological warfare agents by metabolic phenotype; the development and application of BioMEMS (Bio - Micro - Electro - Mechanical Systems) devices to understand the molecular signaling associated with chemotaxis, cellular motility, angiogenesis, and metastasis; and the nature of the signaling and metabolic activity associated with the immune response. -
Dr. Suseela Somarajan is currently a Research Instructor with the GIST laboratory at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. She received MS and M.Phil degrees in Physics from University College, Kerala India, in 1992 and 1995, respectively. From 1995 to 2003, she worked as a teaching faculty in Kerala,India. In 2004, she moved to USA to pursue her Ph.D degree in Physics at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN. Her current research interest includes developing techniques to investigate how electric and magnetic fields on and outside the body habitus may be used to characterize the functional cellular changes assoicited with GI diseases. -
Nicole D.Muszynski is a Biomedical Engineer in the department of Physics & Astronomy at Vanderbilt University and department of General Surgery at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. After receiving her BS in Biology from Lipscomb University, Nicole joined as a Biomedical Engineer with the GIST laboratory in 2011. Nicole is conducting research to develop non-invasive bioelectromagnetic technique for early identification and diagnosis of GI ailments. -
Joseph D Olson is a Biomedical Engineer in the department of General Surgery at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. After receiving his BS in Electrical Engineering from Lipscomb University, Joseph joined as a Biomedical Engineer with the GIST Laboratory in 2018. His current research involves SQUID-reliquifier integration and biomedical signal processing.