Director of Center for Health Sciences and Human Sleep Research Program, Biosciences Division
Fiona Baker, Ph.D. is the Director of the Human Sleep Research Program at SRI International, which she joined in 2005. She focuses on understanding the interplay between sleep physiology and human health across the lifespan. Baker is a world expert on issues of sleep in women. Her areas of research include sleep EEG, sex differences in sleep, sleep in menopause, relationships between sleep and cardiovascular functioning, and interactions between brain development, sleep, and behaviors such as alcohol use, across adolescence.
Baker has received funding from the National Institutes of Health, and is currently PI on two consortium projects about adolescent development: The National Consortium on Alcohol and NeuroDevelopment in Adolescence (NCANDA) and the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study (ABCD). She has published extensively on issues of sleep in women in the context of reproductive stages; her research has advanced understanding of insomnia that develops during the menopausal transition, and revealed interactions between the female reproductive system and sleep and circadian regulatory systems.
Baker also holds an appointment as Honorary Professorial Research Fellow in the Brain Function Research Group, School of Physiology, at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.
Baker has published more than 80 scientific papers and has a Ph.D. degree in physiology from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.
View Baker’s publications on Research Gate and Google Scholar.