Sensing the Perfect Tomato

Denise Wilson is a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and adjunct professor in the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle where she has worked since 1999. Previously, she held a similar position at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, Kentucky.

She is also founder and managing director of Coming Alongside, an environmental services non-profit organization whose mission is to make hazards posed by the environment to human and animal health visible and actionable. She received the B.S. degree in mechanical engineering from Stanford University (1988), the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, in 1989 and 1995, respectively, and a M.Ed. from the University of Washington in 2008.

She has published over 40 articles in peer-reviewed journals and over 100 articles in peer reviewed conferences on topics ranging from circuit design to environmental health. She has also published three book chapters and developed extensive web-based educational materials in educational research, environmental health, and the environmental impacts of technology.

She has taught a wide range of university level courses at both undergraduate and graduate on topics related to the environmental and social impacts of technology, sustainable design for the developing world, impacts of natural disasters, circuits, sensors, and semiconductor devices. She has given public lectures to local communities on the social and environmental impacts of electronic waste and natural disasters as well as learning workshops at environmental health conferences on topics related to electronic waste, mobile phones and health, and heavy metals in air, soil, food, and water. Her research focuses on both engineering education as well as sensors systems with particular interests in applying sensors to addressing needs and solving problems in environmental monitoring.