In this interview, David Zierler, Oral Historian for AIP, interviews Dr. Joel Myklebust, former deputy director of the Office of Science and Engineering Laboratories, Center for Devices and Radiological Health, at the FDA. Myklebust recounts his childhood in Iowa and his libertarian politics as a college student in Chicago. He describes his graduate work at the Medical College of Wisconsin-Milwaukee where he conducted research on neuroscience from a physics perspective. Myklebust explains his work in biomedical engineering at Marquette where he studied neurological issues relating to aging. Myklebust describes the circumstances leading to his tenure at the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research, where he worked on rehabilitation engineering, and he describes his work in CDRH over the past twenty years. He provides a broad overview of the development of biomedical physics at the FDA, and he discusses the various technological and regulatory issues surrounding the Agencys mission to ensure device efficacy and safety.