News Brief: Journey from farm kid to scientist earns Erin Baker 'Rising Star' award
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Category: ResearchType: News
Source: PNNL
Date: Monday, April 3rd, 2017
April 03, 2017 
SAN FRANCISCO - Chemist Erin Baker was recognized today with a "Rising Star" award at the national meeting of the American Chemical Society in San Francisco. The award recognizeswomen chemists who have demonstrated outstanding promise for contributions to their fields of science.
Baker, an expert on mass spectrometry at the D.O.E.'s Pacific Northwest National Lab, 1st caught the science bug while a teenager on her family's ranch in central Montana. Arsenic and cyanide pollution in area streams was linked to a local gold mining operation, and Baker helped her family understand the chemistry involved.
Now Baker is part of a PNNL team that is creating new ways to apply mass spectrometry and related techniques to learn more about a range of issues more quickly and with ever-smaller samples. Current research topics that Baker and colleagues are exploring include pre-eclampsia, tuberculosis, breast cancer and Alzheimer's disease, as well as the activities of microbial communities that help shape our environment.
For an overview of Baker's work and the ACS award, view this article.
Tags: Fundamental Science, Chemistry, Biology, Health Science, Mass Spectrometry and Separations, Cancer Research, Microbiology
Interdisciplinary teams at Pacific Northwest National Lab address many of America's most pressing issues in energy, the environment and national security through advances in basic and applied science. Founded in 1965, PNNL employs 4,400 staff and has an yearly budget of nearly $1 billion. It is managed by Battelle for the D.O.E.'s Office of Science. As the single biggest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, the Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information on PNNL, visit the PNNL News Center, or follow PNNL on Facebook, Google+, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter.
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