Baker Lab at UMB

Welcome to the Baker Lab at UMass Boston! We work on the microbial ecology of fungal symbioses and we’re currently spinning up research on lichens and fungus-farming termites.

I am currently looking for undergraduate researchers, as well as for graduate students to start in Fall 2027. Please contact me if you might be interested in working in the lab!

About me

I joined the the Biology Department at UMass Boston as an Assistant Professor in September 2026.

My research interests revolve around patterns and drivers of biodiversity, especially species interactions. I primarily explore ecological questions using molecular tools such as DNA metabarcoding and shotgun metagenomics. My work encompasses field collections and experiments, molecular work in the laboratory, and computational analysis and modeling.

Prior to joining UMass Boston, I worked with the Soil Microbiology Group at the US Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory. My job involved exploring the microbiome of permafrost and other cold environments to understand how microbes live in extreme environments and how microbial communities will respond to changes like warming climate.

My postdoctoral training at Harvard involved using DNA extracted from blood-feeding leeches to identify the animals that the leeches have fed on, in order to monitor changing biodiversity in the Ailao Mountains of China’s Yunnan Province. My previous postdoctoral work at Princeton used DNA metabarcoding to explore how termites create spatial patterns in soil microbial communities in African savannas. My PhD research focused on ant-associated microbial and arthropod communities on the Vachellia (Acacia) drepanolobium ant-plants that grow in these savannas, using DNA barcoding, metabarcoding and stable isotope analysis to examine species associations, community compositions and trophic interactions.