Stephanie Bailey was born in Northern California and was raised on a farm in Windsor, California, with her two sisters. Growing up, Bailey was expected to help with chores around the farm and was also a member of her local 4-H Club. She attended a local elementary and middle school before attending high school in Healdsburg, California. While in high school, Bailey explored her interests in multiple subjects, such as math, chemistry, physics, and engineering. She initially aspired to attend a nationally recognized school, but due to financial constraints instead attended a local junior college, where she received the Doyle Scholarship. While attending junior college, Bailey formed professional connections with her professors and chose to pursue physics. In the late nineties, Bailey traveled across the country for an internship at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and the NASA Langley Research Center, where she worked in the cryogenics technology branch.

While adjusting to life on the East Coast, Bailey visited the College of William & Mary with friends. She became interested in the history of the school and decided to transfer from her junior college. While waiting to attend William & Mary, she undertook internships at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where she developed software for cancer-detecting devices, and the University of Chicago, where she analyzed bone tissue images. While she was interested in the medical applications of physics, William & Mary’s physics program had a strong focus on nuclear physics. After receiving her Bachelor of Science in physics from William & Mary, Bailey decided to stay at the college to pursue an advanced degree. She worked with David Armstrong at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, where she completed her thesis on the G-Zero experiment.

After receiving her PhD, Bailey returned to the West Coast, where she worked as a postdoctoral fellow and project lead at Stanford University, developing microsimulation models for adult obesity and malnutrition in India and child welfare in United States. While at Stanford, Bailey began experiencing debilitating bouts of abdominal pain. She eventually had to leave her position and go on Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI). Years later, she would receive a diagnosis for idiopathic pancreatitis. As she could not work full-time while receiving SSDI, Bailey took up a remote, part-time position at Virginia Commonwealth University where she redesigned mathematical models of HIV in resource-limited settings.

In 2014, Bailey became a Science and Technology Policy Fellow at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). While this meant she would lose her disability benefits, Bailey was determined to reclaim her career. While working as a fellow, she wrote reports regarding USAID-supported LGBTI activities. After a year working as a AAAS fellow, Bailey decided she wanted to return to physics and was offered a teaching lectureship at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She taught physics courses for life sciences students and brought an art-based approach to learning for her students. While she received positive feedback for this approach. In 2019, Bailey accepted an assistant professorship at Chapman University, but after a lack of support from the administration, Bailey left the position.

Bailey concludes her oral history interview by reflecting on her career and the isolation she felt as a disabled scientist. She offers advice to other disabled scientists and warns that administrations may not be as supportive or accommodating of disabilities as they claim to be. She discusses her work with the Foundation for Science and Disability, which offers graduate-level scholarships to scientists with disabilities or to those who are performing disability-related research.

Please note: This oral history is currently sealed until 2051.