Overview
Prof. Wilson is the Director of the Duke Hearing Center and is an Adjunct or Consulting Professor in each of three departments at Duke: Head and Neck Surgery & Communication Sciences, Biomedical Engineering, and Electrical and Computer Engineering. He has been involved in the development of the cochlear implant (CI) for four decades and is the inventor of many of the signal processing strategies used with the present-day CIs. One of his papers, in the journal Nature, is the most highly cited publication in the principal field of CIs. He also has become keenly interested in global hearing healthcare and presently is the Chair of the Lancet Commission on Hearing Loss. He or he and his teams or colleagues have been recognized with a high number of awards and honors, including the 2015 Russ Prize, “for engineering cochlear implants that allow the deaf to hear,” and the 2013 Lasker~DeBakey Award, “for the development of the modern cochlear implant – a device that bestows hearing to individuals with profound deafness.” The Russ Prize is the world’s top honor for bioengineering and the Lasker Awards are second only to the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for recognizing advances in medicine and medical science. Prof. Wilson is a recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award from the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke (in 2007) and from the University as a whole (in 2019; the 42nd recipient of that Award). Additionally, he is a member of the USA’s National Academy of Engineering and is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the Acoustical Society of America, and the National Academy of Inventors.
Current Appointments & Affiliations
Adjunct Professor in the Department of Head and Neck Surgery & Communication Sciences
·
2002 - Present
Head and Neck Surgery & Communication Sciences,
Clinical Science Departments
Scholar in Residence in the Pratt School of Engineering
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2013 - Present
Pratt School of Engineering
Adjunct Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
·
2015 - Present
Electrical and Computer Engineering,
Pratt School of Engineering
Affiliate, Duke Global Health Institute
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2014 - Present
Duke Global Health Institute,
University Institutes and Centers
Recent Publications
Development of Measures for d/Deaf and Hard of Hearing Stigma: Introduction to the Special Supplement on Stigma Measurement Tools.
Journal Article Ear Hear · September 2024 People who are d/Deaf or hard of hearing (d/DHH) often experience stigma and discrimination in their daily lives. Qualitative research describing their lived experiences has provided useful, in-depth insights into the pervasiveness of stigma. Quantitative ... Full text Link to item CiteTowards universal access: A review of global efforts in ear and hearing care.
Journal Article Hear Res · April 2024 Hearing loss affects 1.6 billion people worldwide and disproportionately affects those in low- and middle-income countries. Despite being largely preventable or treatable, ear and hearing conditions result in significant and lifelong morbidity such as dela ... Full text Link to item CitePriorities for hearing loss prevention and estimates of global cause-specific burdens of hearing loss: a systematic rapid review.
Journal Article The Lancet. Global health · February 2024 BackgroundHearing loss affects approximately 1·6 billion individuals worldwide. Many cases are preventable. We aimed to estimate the annual number of new hearing loss cases that could be attributed to meningitis, otitis media, congenital rubella s ... Full text CiteRecent Grants
Lancet Project
ConferencePrincipal Investigator · Awarded by Fondation Pour L'Audition · 2019 - 2022View All Grants
Education, Training & Certifications
Duke University ·
2015
Ph.D.
University of Technology Sydney (Australia) ·
2014
D.Eng.
University of Warwick (United Kingdom) ·
2013
D.Sc.
Duke University ·
1974
B.S.E.E.