About

Erin Baker is a faculty member associated with the College of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her research focus includes areas related to computational social science, and she is involved in the institute's activities that explore social media, social network analysis, experiments, and statistical modeling. Her contact email is edbaker@umass.edu, indicating her active engagement in academic and research initiatives within the university.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Environmental economics
• Economics
• Business
• Computer Science
• Engineering
• Microeconomics
• Social Science
• Public economics
• Public relations
• Computer Security
• Sociology
• Environmental resource management
• Management science
• Chemistry
• Systems engineering
• Environmental science
• Pedagogy
• Natural resource economics
• Actuarial science
• Meteorology
• Physics
• Knowledge management
• Geography

Selected publications

• Modeling technological change

  Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks · 2026-03-17

  book-chapterSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Coordinated changes in stromal and hematopoietic cells that define the perinatal to juvenile transition in the mouse thymus

  Cell Reports · 2025-12-01 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  Perinatal T cells have distinctive phenotypes and functions that may be due in part to age-associated features of stromal cells in the perinatal thymus. We identify age-associated changes in mouse thymic epithelial cells, mesenchyme, endothelium, and hematopoietic antigen-presenting cells from birth to one month of age using single-cell transcriptional profiling, flow cytometry, and imaging. Coordinated cellular and molecular changes occur at 7-14 days of age, designated "transitional ages," as thymus growth switches to homeostasis. E2F target gene expression declines, and the expression of type I interferon response genes increases across diverse cell types at transitional ages. Alterations in thymic stromal cells coincide with elevated markers of thymocyte self-reactivity and enhanced Treg suppressive phenotypes and function. The integrated results reveal coordinated remodeling of multiple stromal cell types during the perinatal to juvenile transition, which likely impacts T cell differentiation. These datasets provide a resource for the investigation of the perinatal thymus environment.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The value of hydropower flexibility for electricity system decarbonization

  Energy Reports · 2025-02-17 · 16 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Hydropower is an abundant, dispatchable, clean energy resource that will play an important role in supporting the clean energy transition. In particular, dispatchable hydropower can provide the operational flexibility that will be required in future systems with high variable renewable energy penetrations. However, the theoretical operational flexibility of hydropower can be restricted in practice by various non-power constraints. In this paper, we quantify how increasing the operational flexibility of dispatchable hydropower resources with reservoirs impacts least-cost generation portfolios and supports power system decarbonization. Specifically, we conduct a capacity expansion analysis of a two-zone system: a hydro-dominated region and a neighboring region with aggressive decarbonization targets that are represented by the United States Pacific Northwest and California respectively. We then introduce a quantifiable index for characterizing the operational flexibility of reservoir hydropower and assess how changes in this metric impact the system-optimal generation portfolio. We find that increasing hydropower flexibility leads to more investment in wind generation, less investment in natural gas generation, lower system costs, and lower system emissions. We further demonstrate a substitution effect between the grid services provided by flexible hydropower operation, increased transmission capacity on a congested line, and energy storage resources. Finally, we show that increasing the operational flexibility of hydropower increases the effective load carrying capability of both hydropower and wind resources. This research supports a more nuanced understanding of how hydropower can support electricity system decarbonization and may motivate reassessing the cost-benefit tradeoffs of non-power constraints that restrict operational flexibility. • A novel metric to characterize hydropower flexibility is introduced. • Increased hydropower flexibility supports new wind investments. • Flexible hydropower increases the resource adequacy value of hydropower and wind. • Transmission congestion limits the impact of hydropower flexibility. • Relaxing hydropower operational constraints can decrease system costs.

  PublisherDOI

• Benefits of aggressively co-undergrounding electric and broadband lines outweigh costs

  Cell Reports Sustainability · 2025-02-21

  articleOpen access

  Electric power and broadband have become essential services for modern economies, but utilities face substantial challenges in providing disruption-free access. Recent legislation, including the U.S. Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021, has allocated enormous resources towards improving infrastructure systems. Historically, undergrounding has enhanced system reliability but has been cost-effective only in densely populated areas. We investigate the conditions under which undergrounding becomes cost-effective, particularly when co-deployed with fiber optic lines. We introduce a novel data-driven cost–benefit model and conduct a detailed localized case study in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts. The results indicate that when undergrounding is viable, aggressively co-undergrounding yields the highest net benefit. This finding is robust across various assumptions. Importantly, our model highlights the importance of assumptions regarding undergrounding’s effectiveness in reducing outages. Our model is readily deployable to other study areas, providing effective decision-making capabilities even with limited data.

  PublisherDOI

• Harnessing hybrid buses in the near term leads to faster transit decarbonization

  iScience · 2025-09-13 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  To achieve net-zero emissions, transit systems will eventually have to transition to fully electric buses. We introduce an integrated decision-making and energy modeling framework to analyze transition strategies from diesel to zero-emitting buses under various budget scenarios. Using a detailed energy model of the buses to predict fuel usage, we then optimally assign types of buses to scheduled trips to minimize diesel consumption and emissions. Applying this framework to the Pioneer Valley Transit Authority network, we find that under realistic budget and infrastructure constraints, an electrification future that allows a mix of electric and hybrid buses reduces emissions more effectively than an all-electric future. Specifically, for a fixed budget, incorporating hybrid buses results in an additional 6% emissions reduction over the 18-year planning horizon compared to an electric-only future. This shows that hybrid buses can speed up the elimination of diesel buses and maximize emissions reduction while mitigating infrastructure and financial constraints. Our framework evaluates different fleet transition futures and provides transit agencies with a data-driven framework to plan investments and meet their decarbonization targets under realistic budgetary and infrastructure constraints.

  PublisherDOI

• Energy for Education

  2025-04-02

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Many issues surround the global energy crisis, including climate change and peak oil.One crucial issue that is often overlooked is awareness about energy issues and the sustainable and renewable technologies being implemented and researched to solve them.Spreading awareness among youth is a way to engage the next generation in such topics, build their interest solving energy issues, and spread awareness across their own communities.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Understanding the Technological Relatedness Between ICEs and EVs and Its Policy Implications

  Scholarworks (University of Massachusetts Amherst) · 2025-08-27

  articleSenior author

  In this report, we applied our established method (Wang et al., 2024) to explore the connections between ICEs and EVs. While ICEs and EVs are often regarded as alternatives for transportation needs and show observational relatedness, the extent of their underlying technological relatedness remains unclear. We provide a conceptual framework that breaks down the two technologies into components based on functions and allow for easier comparison. We also identify corresponding patent classification codes for each component. We summarize which components of EVs demonstrate strong continuity with ICEs and which represent innovations that depart from automotive heritage. The report highlights the methodological challenges in analyzing technological relatedness between these domains, particularly due to the complex taxonomies and the difficulty of identifying matching technological components.

  Publisher

• Robust pathway analysis of electricity investments under net-zero uncertainties

  Energy and Climate Change · 2025-07-02

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Highlights • A robust pathway approach to inform U.S. electric sector decisions under deep decarbonization. • Identifies EMF 37 pathways that are non-dominated across cost uncertainty and multiple metrics • Considers total cost, CO2, and co-pollutants • Natural Gas Combined Cycle is a key pivot technology, a defining difference between pathways • High Natural Gas prices can lead to high co-pollution in otherwise low-pollution pathways Policy-makers and planners are looking to make robust power system investments under deep uncertainty and conflicting objectives. This paper presents a robust pathway approach to address a range of uncertainties and multiple objectives and provides a proof-of-concept applied to U.S. electric sector decisions under deep decarbonization. Results show the importance of considering a range of criteria: considering cost alone or CO 2 alone resulted in just two non-dominated pathways in each case; adding in the consideration of co-pollutants increased the number of non-dominated pathways to six of the nine considered. This analysis highlights the importance of considering fuel price uncertainty and, in particular, the possibility of high natural gas prices, which can lead to high co-pollution in otherwise low-polluting pathways. Results illustrate trade-offs between emissions and costs; as well as between CO 2 and co-pollutants, which is largely due to carbon removal use. The robust pathway framework is illustrative; we discuss how future work with harmonized multi-model outputs and spatially explicit pollutant metrics can provide additional insights.

  PublisherDOI

• Utilities choosing coal, solar, nuclear or other power sources have a lot to consider, beyond just cost

  2025-04-14

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Informed investments in clean energy technologies

  Nature Energy · 2025-11-24

  article
  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• CAREER: Technology R&D Policy, Climate Change, and Uncertainty

  NSF · $456k · 2008–2014

• Collaborative Research: Choosing a Portfolio of Technology Policies in an Uncertain World

  NSF · $395k · 2010–2014

• IGERT: Offshore Wind Energy Engineering, Environmental Science, and Policy

  NSF · $3.3M · 2011–2018

Frequent coauthors

• Valentina Bosetti

  47 shared

• Laura Díaz Anadón

  University of Cambridge

  32 shared

• Anna Goldstein

  Fidelity Biosciences (United States)

  22 shared

• Lara Aleluia Reis

  18 shared

• Elena Verdolini

  RFF-CMCC European Institute on Economics and the Environment

  11 shared

• Karen E. Jenni

  United States Geological Survey

  10 shared

• Elena Claire Ricci

  9 shared

• Jeffrey M. Keisler

  University of Massachusetts Boston

  8 shared

Labs

• Computational Social Science InstitutePI

  The lab focuses on computational social science research.

Education

• Ph.D., Engineering-Economic Systems & Operations Research

  Stanford University

• B.A., Mathematics

  U.C. Berkeley