Current Research
Dr. Baer's research centers on the future evolution of the Internet, and how information technologies affect both commercial and public sector organizations and activities. His work also focuses on aligning public and private sector incentives to improve economic and social outcomes in regulated industry sectors such as telecommunications, transportation and energy.

Current Position
Dr. Baer is professor of policy analysis at the Pardee RAND Graduate School and an advisor to the RAND Corporation, as well as chair of the external advisory board of the UCLA Center on Embedded Network Sensing. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and former chair of the AAAS Industrial Science and Technology Section. He is also Trustee and former chair of the KCRW Public Radio Foundation.

Background
Before joining RAND, Dr. Baer was Director of Advanced Technology at the Times Mirror Company, worked on the staff of the White House Office of Science and Technology, and was a member of technical staff at Bell Telephone Laboratories. He was a White House Fellow in 1966-67, the second year of the program. He chaired the TPRC Research Conference on Communication, Information and Internet Policy; and has served on the Electric Power Research Institute advisory council, the Governor's Council on Information Technology for the State of California, and the technical advisory council of Cable Television Laboratories (CableLabs). He was a visiting professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication in 1998-99.

Education
Dr. Baer holds a B.S. in physics from the California Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Wisconsin, where he received a special award for excellence in teaching.

Publications
Dr. Baer has published widely in the fields of media, communications, information technology, energy, and science and technology policy. Recent publications include:

   "Private Sector Incentives for Managing IT Security," Contemporary Security Policy, Special Issue on Security in the Information Age, 190-208, April 2003.

   "Competition and Collaboration in Online Distance Learning," in William H. Dutton and Brian D. Loader, eds, Digital Academe, London: Routledge, 2002.

   "Signing Initiative Petitions Online: Possibilities, Problems and Prospects," in L.F. Cranor and S. Greenstein, eds, Communications Policy and Information Technology, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002.

   Electricity Requirements for a Digital Society, RAND, MR-1617-DOE, 2002.

   The Internet's Coming of Age, Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, National Research Council, Washington, DC, National Academy Press, 2001.