Wickert joined Iowa State as mechanical engineering chair and the Larry and Pam Pithan Professor of Mechanical Engineering in 2007. He has encouraged an environment of excellence in the mechanical engineering department through the hiring and professional development of faculty and staff, strategic research programs, student recruiting and diversity initiatives, accessibility to new educational opportunities, and communicating with stakeholders.

Wickert is author of the textbook "An Introduction to Mechanical Engineering," which has been translated into Korean, Chinese and Portuguese. He holds two U.S. patents and has authored more than 125 papers published in archival journals and presented at technical conferences. Wickert has served as an associate editor of the Journal of Vibration and Acoustics and the Journal of Information Storage Systems, and he is a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

From 1990 to 2007, Wickert was a faculty member at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh. He served as a visiting research fellow at the University of Cambridge, England; and as a visiting professor at Helsinki University of Technology, Finland. Wickert received bachelor's (1985), master's (1987) and doctoral (1989) degrees in mechanical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.