Joan Bailey-Wilson

Joan Ellen Bailey-Wilson (born 1953) is an American statistical geneticist. She is a Scientist Emerita at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), where she previously served as a senior investigator and co-chief of the Computational and Statistical Genomic Branch of the Institute. She retired from her active research position in September 2022.

Education Bailey-Wilson received a B.A. magna cum laude in Biology from Western Maryland College followed by a Ph.D. in medical genetics with a minor in biomathematics from Indiana University School of Medicine in 1981 under the direction of Joe C. Christian. She completed post-doctoral training with Robert Elston in the Department of Biometry and Genetics at Louisiana State University Medical Center.

Career Bailey-Wilson became a professor at the Medical Center of Louisiana at New Orleans before joining the National Institutes of Health in 1995.

She has served on many scientific advisory boards including the Cancer Family Registry (CFRCCS) Advisory Board, the "World Trade Center Kinship and Data Analysis Panel" for the National Institute of Justice and the Genetic Analysis Workshop Advisory Board. She also served as a member of the International Genetic Epidemiology Society (IGES) Board of Directors (1999-2001), as IGES president-elect, president and past president (2006-2008) and as chair of the IGES Ethical, Legal and Social Issues committee.

They were married in 1978, and two years later they received their doctorates and went to Louisiana State University Medical School in New Orleans to work with Robert Elston. a leading statistical geneticist. Joan and Alexander entered LSU as postdoctoral fellows and stayed for 15 years, each ultimately reaching the rank of full professor. When Elston left Louisiana State University for Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland in 1995, Wilson and Bailey-Wilson decided to relocate as well, to NHGRI.

Initially they were in separate branches—Wilson in the Genetic Disease Research Branch led by Robert Nussbaum and Bailey-Wilson in the Medical Genetics Branch led at the time by Clair Francomano. However, their work was so different from that of the other more traditional bench scientists in their branches that they posed an administrative challenge.

"We don't purchase supplies; we make contracts for data collection. When we buy computers, it's not laptop computers, it's big servers," explained Wilson.

So two years later, Wilson and Bailey-Wilson became a branch unto themselves—the Inherited Disease Research Branch (IDRB). Because NIH's anti-nepotism rules prohibit one spouse from supervising the other, Nussbaum was appointed acting chief of the branch. Over the years, Nussbaum gradually taught Wilson and Bailey-Wilson the administrative aspects of the chief's job; thus, they were well prepared to take over this year. "He trained us up," said Wilson. Co-branch chiefs are rare at the NIH; married co-chiefs are even rarer.

Bailey-Wilson and Wilson have 2 children.