About
Dr. Marissa Baker is an Assistant Professor in the UW Department of Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences (DEOHS). She also serves as Deputy Director of the Northwest Center for Occupational Health and Safety, housed at DEOHS. She is an affiliate faculty in the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies at UW.
Dr. Baker's research centers on occupational experiences of vulnerable or underrepresented groups. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she worked closely with a variety of worker organizations, government and industry partners to characterize physical and mental health outcomes experienced by workers, characterize their risk perceptions and needs, and propose and evaluate interventions for safe work. Dr. Baker also studies the experiences of women in the workplace.
Trained as an industrial hygienist, Dr. Baker has expertise in workplace exposure assessment, using techniques such as air sampling, biomonitoring and exposure modeling. Recently, her interests and expertise have expanded to characterize stress and mental health in worker populations, using both survey and qualitative methods. Based on her occupational studies of manganese exposures and health effects, she was invited to serve as a committee member for the International Agency for Research on Cancer in reviewing welding fume as a carcinogen. In 2021, Baker was appointed by the administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency to the Science Advisory Committee on Chemicals. She also serves as a member of the WHO Technical Advisory Group on Occupational Burden of Disease Estimation.
