Associate Professor of Practice
Byron Wilson is the CEO & founder of Empty Set, a design-centered R&D studio for leading healthcare organizations. He brings broad and deep multidisciplinary experience from both academic and professional project work within the scope of technology-based research and development through the creation of value from a strategic design perspective, with projects centered on human subject interactions, clinical trials, applied science investigations, information design, data analysis and prototyping. He is formerly an Associate Professor of Strategic Design at ArtCenter College of Design, where he teaches courses on strategic design and entrepreneurship and represents the Department of Graduate Industrial Design within the Faculty Senate. Byron has led large innovation projects from early concept design, research, and through implementation. He was the first design hire by Southern California Permanente Medical Group where he contributed to regional and national efforts as the Senior Manager of Innovation in Southern California. He is an internationally recognized speaker on early research strategy and design in new products and services for large scale healthcare organizations, having given talks at Google Health, Harvard, and MIT.
Byron received his B.S. in biology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and completed an M.Sc. in Industrial Design from the ArtCenter College of Design through a dual study program with the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).