Wade Trappe

Research is more than math and experiments; for me, it's about the stories we uncover. My passion is finding the story that lies at the heart of the world around us and within us, stories that need to be discovered or created with the art of engineering. Equations are never the story, just a tool for extracting the deeper lesson—engineering research should be warm and comfortable, familiar and with a creative purpose, like telling a story.

This love of “the story” has led me to become a multi-disciplinary researcher, working in fields as diverse as acoustics, harmonic analysis, wireless communications, information security, and biological and medical systems. I enjoy examining problems from non-traditional angles using a mix of theoretical, experimental, and systems-level tools—and then to narrate to observations for others to hear the great stories that were hidden in the math and science.