Wilson graduated
summa cum laude from
Rice University in 1989. After earning a master's degree in statistics from
Carnegie Mellon University in 1990, she completed a Ph.D. at
Duke University in 1995. Her dissertation,
Statistical Models for Shapes and Deformations, was supervised by Valen E. Johnson. After completing her doctorate, Wilson worked in the defense industry as a statistician for four years before joining the research staff at
Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1999, working on the statistical reliability of weapons. She moved to
Iowa State University as an associate professor of statistics in 2008, and then moved again to the
Institute for Defense Analyses in 2011. She returned to academia as an associate professor at North Carolina State University in 2011, and was promoted to full professor in 2015. In 2020 she became Associate Vice Chancellor for National Security and Special Research Initiatives at North Carolina State; in 2024 she was promoted to Senior Associate Vice Chancellor for Research Initiatives and Commercialization and served as Interim Vice Chancellor for Research in 2024-2025. ==Book==