About

Reid Bailey is an engineering educator, designer, and scholar focused on engineering design education, systems thinking and analysis, and sustainability. He joined the University of Virginia faculty in 2006, after holding faculty positions at the University of Dayton and the University of Arizona, where he was the Lockheed Martin Assistant Professor of Engineering Design. His work emphasizes integrating real-world engineering projects into classroom settings, including creating and leading study abroad programs such as UVA in Argentina and UVA in Sweden, which focus on projects with wineries and environmental sustainability respectively. Bailey has led the development of interdisciplinary engineering design programs at UVA, including the TECHNOLOGY LEADERS PROGRAM and the Rice 120 Lacy Engineering Design Studio. He has coordinated and taught capstone programs at multiple institutions, mentoring numerous industry-supported teams. His teaching incorporates real-world projects with actual clients into first-year engineering courses, and he has led student-focused engineering design conferences, including chairing the IEEE Systems and Information Engineering Design Symposium at UVA and co-founding Engineering Design Day at Arizona. Bailey is also a co-author of a design-centered textbook for first-year engineering students and has authored numerous publications on engineering design education and industrial ecology.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Engineering
• Engineering management
• Political Science
• Psychology
• Mathematics education
• Artificial Intelligence
• Knowledge management
• Systems engineering
• Pedagogy
• Medical education
• Transport engineering
• Multimedia

Selected publications

• Using design timelines for tracking and reflection on design processes: Emerging insights

  2025-08-21 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Creating engineering design integrated science units and lessons

  School Science and Mathematics · 2025-02-27

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) require science teachers to integrate engineering design into science lessons. However, many science teachers need support to create such lessons because they lack preparation in engineering. Similarly, most pre‐service teachers enter teacher preparation programs without preparation in engineering. Furthermore, the NGSS do not provide templates for creating engineering design integrated science (EDIS) lessons and activities. To address this problem in our science teacher education program, we have created templates for creating EDIS units and lessons. In this paper, we describe the EDIS templates, outcomes, and suggestions for using the templates in science teacher education. The templates were first introduced into our science methods course in 2015. Our research shows that pre‐service teachers developed skills for creating EDIS units using these templates. Some EDIS units created by our pre‐service teachers using these templates have been published for other teachers to use. Students who received EDIS instruction from our pre‐service teachers in schools improved their understanding of science concepts and engineering design process. Therefore, these templates can be used in other teacher education programs to prepare teachers in creating EDIS units, lessons and activities.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• A Decision-Driven Methodology for Business Intelligence Dashboards in Start-Ups

  2025-05-02

  articleSenior author

  Many businesses rely on data-driven metrics to inform critical decisions and drive success. Data reporting is a common way to facilitate these decisions so businesses may effectively achieve their mission. However, ‘data’ can present a significant obstacle for companies if not appropriately presentable for stakeholders while maintaining accuracy and reliability. The work herein describes the design of dashboard systems that effectively display important metrics based on user and enterprise needs for a startup. Through utilizing user design principles and identifying business needs, we applied the following discovery methodology: understanding and familiarizing ourselves with enterprise data, conducting discovery interviews with stakeholders, and distilling interviews into key business decision needs. From here, we determined system objectives for each decision and metrics for each objective. This methodology, which focuses more on the centrality of a dashboard in supporting decisions than many published methodologies, is applied to a specific case, a financial technology startup that focuses on loans. The process involved simultaneously building an understanding of the business, discovering and identifying business decisions, wireframing the data reports, verifying that the data reports effectively and accurately guide the business decisions, and realizing the data reports in a Business Intelligence platform. Applying this methodology to the startup revealed several key takeaways: the importance of pivoting quickly from paper prototypes to prototypes using the final product software, distinctly identified decision traceability for each dashboard element, and iteration between stakeholder engagement, product development, and testing.

  PublisherDOI

• A Systems Methodology for Informed Solar Energy Decision-Making

  2024-05-03

  articleSenior author

  Solar technology for buildings has flourished in recent years. The technology is becoming more popular in both the residential and commercial sectors. The process of purchasing solar is often complicated by different proposals from companies that cannot be directly compared. Changing government incentives, multiple financial models, the 25 year panel lifecycle, quickly changing technologies, structural limitations and diverse stakeholder motives make comparing proposals difficult. Presented through a case study of a non-profit in Charlottesville, Virginia, we propose a systems methodology for navigating this complicated landscape. This methodology involves working with stakeholders in the project to establish main objectives, identify current limitations, determine key decisions, and interpret metrics to measure success of a commercial solar project. These objectives, limitations, and decisions are used with financial and electricity models that we created to evaluate different metrics. Results from the models allow for direct comparison of different company proposals and system sizes.

  PublisherDOI

• Impacts of a Short-Term International Engineering and Business Consulting Practicum

  Frontiers The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad · 2024-11-22

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Increase in short-term programs is one of the biggest shifts in study abroad over the past twenty years. With prior research in this area showing many positive but also mixed impacts, skepticism persists about the ability of short-term study abroad to change students’ views on cultural differences. The aim of this study is to characterize if and how students’ views on cultural differences in the context of international client work change after a practicum-based faculty-led short-term study abroad program in Argentina. Twenty-four students who participated in the program responded to short-answer questions before and after the program. These responses were open-coded, and themes were identified. Results show that, before the program, students largely identified surface-level cultural differences from an ethnocentric perspective. After the program, students were more ethnorelative as evidenced by their discussing the deeper cultural context and values of Argentina and their willingness to adapt.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The SPORT-C Intervention: An Integration of Sports, Case-Based Pedagogy and Systems Thinking Learning

  arXiv (Cornell University) · 2023-06-19

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  The STEM field is unrepresentative of the population it serves. Due to a lack of cultural relevance in STEM courses, there is a dissociation between the lived experience of students from underrepresented racial groups (URG) and STEM course material. The SPORT-C intervention is a framework that combines sports, systems thinking learning, and a case-based pedagogy into an activity that can be used in any STEM course. A pilot study was conducted to determine the viability of the SPORT-C intervention in a classroom setting and determine if it was worth further investigating and if any impact differed by racial identity. The findings from this study implicate that the SPORT-C intervention has an impact on the motivation levels of students to participate in STEM courses.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Pre-service science teachers’ understanding of science and engineering practices, engineering design process, and scientific method

  Journal of STEM Teacher Education · 2023-10-05 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  This study examined secondary pre-service science teachers’ understanding of science and engineering practices, the engineering design process, and the scientific method before and after an intervention. Participants were ten pre-service science teachers. Data were collected through a survey and semi-structured interviews. Results show that after the intervention pre- service science teachers developed understanding of science and engineering practices and used more engineering-specific language when describing them. They also developed an understanding that both engineering design process and scientific method are cyclical and iterative and that the two processes share many practices, but the biggest difference between them is in their purposes. Pre-service teachers also said that the redesign process in engineering design, and the repetition of steps can occur at any point in engineering design process and scientific method. These findings have implications for science teacher education, and teaching and learning of science and engineering design in schools.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• A Model for Integrating Engineering Design into Science Teacher Education

  Journal of Science Education and Technology · 2023-06-16 · 10 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Design of a Prioritization Methodology for Equitable Infrastructure Planning

  2022-04-28 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author

  Charlottesville City Schools, like many school districts around the country, is interested in expanding the number of children with safe routes to walk to school in response to bus driver shortages. However, there is currently not much walking infrastructure that allows elementary students to do so, and the city would like a way to prioritize infrastructure projects that meet current needs. This project aims to provide decision-makers with a methodology to assess the walkability of school districts in order to prioritize future infrastructure investments. The methodology, built with significant stakeholder involvement, is designed to be transparent to all stakeholders, easy to use, and built on sound decision theory principles while integrating equity in the decision process. The methodology consists of three phases. First, a geospatial information system (GIS) is used to identify areas with the greatest need based on the walkability of roads and socioeconomic factors within communities. Once areas in need have been identified, projects in these areas are compiled. The second step calculates a prioritization score to each project based on the calculated walkability improvement the project will have and how many people will be impacted by the project. The final step visualizes the prioritization score and cost of each project. The methodology was then evaluated against objectives that were determined in collaboration with the primary stakeholders that would be applying the method.

  PublisherDOI

• Integrating Modularity for Mass Customization of IoT Wireless Sensor Systems

  2021-04-30 · 3 citations

  articleSenior author

  As data collection and analysis grows in demand across a diverse spectrum of industries, data is collected from many sensors at different ranges with different quantities and types of data. One general approach taken by commercial firms to integrate wireless sensor data is to develop proprietary "ecosystems" of products; home automation companies like NEST, home security companies like SimpliSafe, and agricultural companies like Davis Instruments each require that customers use their hubs with their peripheral sensors. The work in this paper applies a flipped approach where a heterogeneous set of sensors from a range of suppliers connects to a hub over a variety of wireless protocols. The design of the hub, therefore, needs to easily accommodate a wide range of communication and wireless protocols. The focus of this work is on exploring how modularity can be designed into the architecture of a product to facilitate quick and low-cost customization of the hub to a particular need.This particular work focuses on designing such a hub for various low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) applications. LPWANs are technologies and protocols that have longer ranges and lower power usage than higher bandwidth protocols like Wi-Fi. LPWANs, like LoRa, specialize in applications where many sensors are distributed over larger distances and, due to the small amounts of data they intermittently send, require less power. This modular hub needs to be able to recognize the type of radio connected to it and the type of communication (I2C, SPI, UART) used by the radio. Such recognition will enable variable quantities of different radios to be connected to the hub without significant redesign of the electronics or the firmware. Furthermore, the housing for the hub needs to be sufficiently modular so that any radio could be inserted without requiring a new design. Using custom components in only certain interfaces is central to the electronics design, and such modularity depends heavily on the firmware. With respect to the housing, a key trade-off for integrating modularity is accommodating variability in radios while maintaining ergonomic design. A key consideration in both housing and electronic design is incorporating modularity only where needed, and creating components in-house when necessary.

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Collaborative Research: Technology Leaders: A Program to Prepare Students for Designing Multiscale Agile Systems

  NSF · $460k · 2008–2013

Frequent coauthors

• C. W. Gross

  University of Virginia

  33 shared

• Jason Forsyth

  Rice University

  17 shared

• Bethany Brinkman

  Elon University

  17 shared

• Jonathan Su

  Sweet Briar College

  17 shared

• Joost R. Santos

  George Washington University

  16 shared

• Bryan Kuhr

  Sweet Briar College

  16 shared

• Dottie Gardner

  University of Virginia

  16 shared

• Alexandra Coso

  Georgia Institute of Technology

  15 shared

Awards & honors

• Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award (2008)
• Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award (2009)
• Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award (2010)
• Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award (2014)
• Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award (2017)