Dr. Wilson received a BA in biology from California State University−Fullerton in 1974, an MS in molecular biology and biochemistry from the University of California−Irvine in 1977, and his MD from the University of California−San Diego in 1984. He completed his ophthalmology residency at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, in 1988 and was a fellow in cornea and refractive surgery at Louisiana State University Eye Center in New Orleans from 1988 to 1990. Dr. Wilson was assistant/associate professor at the University of Texas Southwestern in Dallas from 1990 to 1995. He was professor and medical director of refractive surgery at the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland from 1995 to 1998. From 1998 to 2003, he was chair of ophthalmology at the University of Washington in Seattle. Since 2003, he has been professor of ophthalmology at the Cleveland Clinic.
Dr. Wilson’s laboratory is focused on cellular and molecular interactions involved in wound healing in the cornea, especially growth factors and receptors in the cornea, basement membranes, and fibrosis. He has been funded by the National Eye Institute of the National Institutes of Health from 1992 to 2021 and by the Department of Defense from 2019 to 2025. He has authored more than 280 peer-reviewed publications. He has received numerous awards, including ARVO Gold Fellowship in 2009, the Richard L Lindstrom CLAO Award Lectureship at the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery annual meeting in 2013, the Barraquer Award from International Society of Refractive Surgery−American Academy of Ophthalmology (ISRS-AAO) in 2020, and the ISRS-AAO Presidential Recognition Award in 2023.
Dr. Wilson has published 4 adventure-thriller novels, most recently The Benghazi Affair in 2018, and the nonfiction book The Making, Breaking and Renewal of a Surgeon-Scientist in 2019, which was a Benjamin Franklin Award finalist for Audiobook of the Year for 2020 in nonfiction.
