Rachel E. Baker

I am the John and Elizabeth Irving Family Assistant Professor of Climate & Health at Brown University with a joint appointment between the Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health and the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society. 

Previously I was a postdoc and associate research scholar at Princeton University (EEB/HMEI) working with Bryan Grenfell, Jessica Metcalf and Gabe Vecchi. I have degrees from Princeton (CPREE PhD program working with Michael Oppenheimer), Cambridge (Maths) and Bristol University (Physics).

I am interested in understanding the drivers of spatial heterogeneity in infectious disease outbreaks including environmental and behavioral factors. A key theme of my work to date has been understanding the implications of climate change for infectious disease outbreaks. I use a combination of statistical inference and mechanistic disease modeling and am increasingly interested in leveraging machine learning approaches for prediction and parameter estimation.  My work has been published in several journals including Science, PNAS, Nature Communications and Climatic Change and featured in media outlets including The New York Times, The Atlantic, WIRED Magazine and Scientific American.

I am always happy to chat about disease dynamics, climate change or public health - feel free to reach out! Email address: rebaker @ brown.edu