The Seattle Aquarium Society has named Joel Baker, Ph.D., the recipient of this year’s Conservation Research Award. The award includes a $10,000 research grant given in Baker’s name to the Seattle Aquarium Research Center for Conservation and Husbandry.

Baker has extensive experience in studying urban waterways. His research focuses on pollutant transport and fate in natural waters and the accumulation of chemicals in aquatic food webs.

An environmental chemist and engineer, Professor Baker is a faculty member in the Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences program at the University of Washington Tacoma, and holds the Port of Tacoma Chair in Environmental Science. In addition, Baker is science director for the Center for Urban Waters, a research partnership between UW Tacoma, the city of Tacoma and the state agency Puget Sound Partnership.

Before joining UW Tacoma in 2007, Baker spent 20 years on the faculty of the University of Maryland, 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 National Research Council’s Committee on Oil in the Sea. He chaired the New York Harbor Model Evaluation Group, advised the European Commission on water quality modeling and served on the board of directors of the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry.

The Conservation Research Award was presented Jan. 28 at the Seattle Aquarium Society’s President’s Dinner.