David W. Piston

David W. Piston is an American physicist. He is the Edward Mallinckrodt, Jr. Professor and Head of Cell Biology and Physiology at Washington University School of Medicine.^[1]

Education

Piston completed a bachelor of arts in physics at Grinnell College in 1984. In 1986, he completed a master of science in physics at University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. He earned his doctor of philosophy in physics from the same institution in 1989.^[2] He was a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Watt W. Webb at Cornell University from 1989 to 1992.^[2][3]

Career

In 1992, Piston joined the faculty of Vanderbilt University where his laboratory worked on pancreatic beta cells and then later alpha cells.^[3] In 2010, he became president of the Microscopy Society of America.^[4] In 2015, he was recruited to Washington University in St. Louis to serve as head of the department of cell biology and physiology.^[3]