J. A. Panitz is Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of New Mexico. He joined UNM in 1988 from Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque. During his sixteen year tenure he was Professor of Physics, Professor of High Technology Materials and Professor of Cell Biology in the School of Medicine. At UNM he developed Visual E&M the first undergraduate laboratory that encouraged critical thinking and role playing in the structured environment of cooperative learning groups.

In 1993 he founded High-Field Consultants to provide expertise and training in high-field phenomena and chemical analysis at the atomic level. During his tenure at Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque from 1970 to 1988 he invented the Field Desorption Spectrometer that added a new functionality to established atom probe philosophy and a unique immunochemical sensor. In 1967 he and Erwin Wilhelm Müller introduced the Atom-Probe Field Ion Microscope, that became the progenitor of commercial Atom Probe Tomography in widespread use today.