Daniel N. Baker is Director of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, as well as a professor in atmospheric and planetary sciences, and in physics, at the University of Colorado-Boulder. He obtained his PhD in 1974 with James A. Van Allen at the University of Iowa. He is currently an investigator on several NASA space missions, including the MESSENGER mission to Mercury, the Magnetospheric MultiScale (MMS) mission, and the Radiation Belt Storm Probes mission (now called the Van Allen Probes mission).