Dr. Rachel L.
Cook is an Associate Professor in the Department of Forestry and Environmental
Resources at North Carolina State University, USA. She also serves as a Co-Director
of the Forest Productivity Cooperative at Forest Productivity Cooperative. Before
joining North Carolina State University in 2016, she worked as an Assistant
Professor of Soil Fertility at Southern Illinois University from 2013 to 2016. She
obtained her B.S. in Biology from Saint Louis University in 2005, and her M.S. in
Natural Resources and Ph.D. in Forestry and Environmental Resources from North
Carolina State University in 2008 and 2012, respectively. Her research focus is
on the silvicultural management of intensively managed plantation forest
systems to enhance long-term productivity and protect natural resources.
Dr. Justin S. Baker
is an Associate Professor and the Director of the Southern Forest Resource Assessment Consortium at the
Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources, North Carolina State University,
USA. Before joining North Carolina State University, he worked as a Research Associate
at Duke University from 2007 to 2011, and
then as a Senior Economist at RTI International from 2011 to 2020. Dr. Baker obtained
his B.S. in International Economics and M.S. in Agricultural and Applied Economics
from Texas Tech University in 2003 and 2005, respectively, and his Ph.D. in Agricultural
Economics from Texas A&M University in 2011. Dr. Baker specializes in the development
and application of economic models that
reflect spatial and temporal dependencies between markets, natural resource systems,
infrastructure, and policy factors. His
recent research covers a wide range of topics,
including forestry and land use, integrated water resource management, climate change
mitigation and adaptation, interactions between trade policy and the environment,
and energy policy. Dr. Baker also holds a guest researcher affiliation with the
International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and maintains collaborations with various government stakeholders, NGOs, and academic
institutions.
