Joel Baker

Professor Joel Baker holds the Port of Tacoma Chair in Environmental Science at the University of Washington Tacoma, is the Science Director of the Center for Urban Waters in Tacoma, and is the Director of the Puget Sound Institute. He holds a Ph.D. degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of Minnesota.

He has co-authored over ninety papers on contaminant cycling in the Great Lakes, the Chesapeake Bay and coastal waters, and edited Atmospheric Deposition of Contaminants to the Great Lakes and Coastal Waters (SETAC Press, 1997). He was the lead author on a scientific review of PCBs in the Hudson River, a contributing author to the Pew Oceans Commission report Marine Pollution in the United States, and a member of the NRC’s Committee on Oil in the Sea. Dr. Baker is an ex officio member of the Puget Sound Partnership Science Panel, which he chaired from 2007-2009. In 2010, he was awarded the Conservation Research Award by the Seattle Aquarium Society.