He spent a year there as Research and Teaching Fellow in Neuro-anatomy before joining the US Air Force in 1951 where he served until retirement in 1971.
He initially served as Ward Officer of Psychiatry and Neurology until he joined 6570th Aerospace Medical Research Lab in 1953.
There he investigated stress effects of motions, sound and wind blast, but his main focus was on bionics, a term he coined in 1958.
(Steele's original meaning was the study of biological organisms to find solutions to engineering problems, a field now also known as biomimetics.)
After retiring from the Air Force, Steele continued to practice medicine with a focus on psychiatry, and served as Medical Director of the Comprehensive Drug Dependency Treatment Program at the Dayton Mental Health Center, where he worked for 20 years until retirement.