William Sikkema

Head transplant? Isn’t that supposed to be impossible because they can’t get the spinal cords joined? William Sikkema, a Ph.D. candidate in biomedical nanotechnology, may have helped find the answer: graphene nanoribbons that are just one atom thick.

A student of Dr. James Tour at Rice University, William Sikkema is part of a team that’s used nanoparticles and nanostructures for an astounding range of treatments: deactivating the “bad” pas of the immune system in MS and rheumatoid arthritis; reducing heart attack and stroke damage; delivering targeted drugs to brain cancers; and electrically stimulating blind retinas.

The most recent project, using graphene nanoribbons to fuse spinal cords, has had remarkable success in rodents, and is now being applied to humans – and possibly the first human head transplant – in conjunction with Sergio Canevero.