Zoe Elisabeth Swann Baillie

Dr Zoe Swann Baillie is an Aerospace Neuroscientist and Research Associate at the Leverhulme Centre for Humanity and Space in Leicester. She brings together neuroscience, speech science, and human factors to ask not only how we keep people alive in extreme environments, but how we help them flourish.

She holds a PhD in Neuroscience from Arizona State University (2022); and a BA (Hons) in Neuroscience and Linguistics from Oberlin College (2019). During her PhD, she developed a medical device for people with severe post-stroke speech loss, while also studying the neurological impacts of spaceflight with the Mayo Clinic and Johns Hopkins University. She later worked in clinical trials improving diagnosis and access to care for women, rural communities, and people living with chronic illness.

Her project AVOCADOS explores whether the human voice can ethically track health and wellbeing in real time during long-duration spaceflight, with the goal of giving astronauts meaningful insight into their own health so they can retain autonomy and pace themselves. Underpinning her work is a simple conviction: joy is not a luxury, but a biological necessity.