His initial research projects investigated sound source localization in humans and bats and the effects of microwave radiation on the auditory system. In 1977, he began work as a research engineer at the Research Triangle Institute (RTI). He was the head of the RTI Neuroscience Program 1983–1994, the director of the Center for Auditory Prosthesis Research 1994–2002, and was a Senior Fellow 2002–07.
In 1983, Wilson received the first of seven contracts (1983–2005) from the Neural Prosthesis Branch of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to investigate sound coding strategies for cochlear implants. This long period of continuous funding allowed him to investigate multiple signal coding strategies. The best known is the high-rate, continuous interleaved sampling (CIS) processor.[4][5]
Among many other features, CIS presents non-simultaneous pulses to the different electrodes in the implant, which greatly reduces deleterious interactions, or crosstalk, among the electrodes. Other signal coding strategies developed and implemented in his laboratory include predecessors of the Fine Structure Processing (FSP, FS4) strategies and of the Fidelity120 virtual channel strategy.
In collaboration with Cochlear Americas, Duke University and the NIH, Wilson's group also developed and evaluated a high pulse rate, channel-picking strategy. A direct outcome was the advanced combination encoder, or ACE strategy.
In 2015, with G. Clark, E. Hochmair, I. Hochmair, and M. Merzenich, he was awarded the Russ Prize “for engineering cochlear implants that allow the deaf to hear.”
^Wilson, B. S., Finley, C. C., Lawson, D. T., Wolford, R. D., Eddington, D. K., and Rabinowitz, W. M. (1991). "Better speech recognition with cochlear implants," Nature 352, 236-238.
