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 and directs the UW Puget Sound Institute. Dr. Baker’s research examines the behavior of organic contaminants in the environment, specifically contaminant transport in estuaries, modeling the exposure and transfer of bioaccumulative chemicals in aquatic food webs, and the use of anthropogenic chemicals as tracers of environmental processes. Dr. Baker has led research in the Great Lakes, the Chesapeake Bay, the Hudson River, and the Puget Sound. His laboratory was the first to demonstrate in vivo dehalogenation of brominated diphenyl ethers in fish, a finding instrumental to the voluntary global phase out these flame retardants. He has co-authored over one hundred papers on contaminant cycling in the Great Lakes, the Chesapeake Bay, Puget Sound and coastal waters, and edited “Atmospheric Deposition of Contaminants to the Great Lakes and Coastal Waters” (SETAC Press).