Fall 2025
By Ben Baker-Katz
If you ask them to explain where they work, the fellows and directors of Rice’s Baker Institute for Public Policy will give you several different answers for why the columned structure at the corner of Alumni Drive and College Way offers a critical public service in today’s world of fractured information.
Retired Ambassador David Satterfield, the institute’s director since 2022, accurately describes it as the “premier academically affiliated public policy institute in the United States” because the Baker Institute combines “rigorous academic research with practitioner viewpoints to produce relevant commentary for the broadest possible audience.”
Rachel Meidl, a fellow in energy and sustainability at the Baker Institute’s Center for Energy Studies, describes the institute as a place where “policy intersects with practicality to promote meaningful change.”
And then there’s Neal Lane — described by colleagues as “one of the architects of U.S. science policy” — who says that the Baker Institute is home to “some of the world’s most renowned policy experts … and former government officials. As for me, I just like to talk.”
When the Baker Institute was founded in 1993, Secretary James A. Baker III’s vision was to create a space where academia and applied policy not only coexist, but actively fuel one another. That vision is emblazoned above the front door to the building: “A bridge between the world of ideas and the world of action.”
More than 30 years later, the institute has grown from a small group of public policy experts to more than 200 fellows, scholars and researchers all dedicated to discussing the world’s most pressing and complex policy issues.
Lane, the senior fellow in science and technology policy at the Baker Institute, has served in various teaching and administrative positions at Rice since the 1960s. Following an eight-year stint in the Clinton administration, including three years as assistant to the president for science and technology and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, he returned to Rice and began working with the Baker Institute. Lane remembers the early years fondly.
“At that time, the Baker Institute was mainly a place where celebrities and major world leaders came to share their knowledge and their experiences with the Rice community,” Lane said.
According to Satterfield, the institute built on that foundation to create a globally admired policy research operation, with more than a dozen research centers and programs that study everything from geopolitical conflicts to the implications of the artificial intelligence boom to vaccine skepticism to sustainable shipping practices.
“The Baker Institute still attracts leaders from all over the world,” he said. “But more important than that, it’s a place where real work is done — where people with deep expertise write, speak and share ideas that can be translated into actionable policy.”
In other words, a bridge between the world of ideas and the world of action.
Education is at the heart of everything the Baker Institute does, because at its core, bridging the gap between ideas and action is an educational task. Identifying market trends and policy solutions is one thing. But what sets the institute apart is its ability to distill those solutions into briefs and commentary that resonates with everyone, from policymakers to C-suite executives to high school students.
“Policy doesn’t like to be technical; it likes to be very straightforward,” said Ken Medlock, the senior director of the Center for Energy Studies. “Moving from technical analysis that you can publish in an academic journal to something that can be condensed into a 30-second elevator pitch is an art, not a science, and it’s an art we have to master in order to do our jobs effectively.”
Another challenge to bridging the gap, and a challenge to crafting public policy more broadly, is that oftentimes the “best” policy and the “correct” policy are not one in the same. Few understand that dichotomy better than Ed Emmett, who spent decades crafting transportation policy in Texas and Washington, D.C., before being elected as the county judge of Harris County — a role that, in Texas, functions as the county’s chief executive officer.
“It would be easy for the experts here to say: ‘This is the truth about, say, vaccines. End of discussion.’ But that’s not what public policy is,” said Emmett, a fellow in energy and transportation policy. “We have to meet the public where they are and explain our research to the public in a way that they understand.”
Kirstin Matthews, the director of the Baker Institute Science and Technology Policy program, has worked with Lane over the years to build a program that facilitates communication about scientific advancement with the public, acknowledging that overcoming the communication barrier is one of the primary challenges scientists face right now.
“The focus of our program started with the idea of the ‘civic scientist,’ which posits that all technical professionals also have a responsibility to engage with the public because the American people need to understand the importance of what scientists [are] talking about,” Lane said.
“It’s a work in progress,” Matthews said of their mission to communicate with the public. “We have not been successful yet, and I don’t know if we ever will. Science keeps getting more complex, so we spend more time trying to help the public understand it.”
The institute’s emphasis on amplifying its findings to the public is particularly important when those findings don’t necessarily align with the public’s perception on a given topic. This is especially true in research areas into which the public has a greater baseline understanding, such as Emmett’s research into the fuels powering what he dubs the “fourth era of transportation” or Meidl’s research into the ever-changing world of sustainability.
“Oftentimes, our research leads us to recommend policies that go against what most people believe to be the most ‘sustainable’ option,” Meidl explained. “Take managing plastics in a landfill. If the infrastructure to recycle plastics doesn’t exist in a certain area, then a landfill at least prevents the plastic from migrating to waterways.”
Like most think tanks, the Baker Institute subsists on a combination of individual donations and research grants from foundations, corporations and government. But unlike some similar institutions, the institute remains strictly nonpartisan and refuses to advocate on behalf of any political position. That commitment to accuracy over advocacy, said Satterfield and Medlock, gives the institute’s work added credibility.
“It’s a lot easier to raise money if you pick a side, but that is philosophically something we cannot do if we’re going to inform policy,” Medlock said. “I take pride in the fact that when we publish studies, we’ll get criticism from both the right and left. That usually means we hit it right down the middle.”
Medlock added that this data-driven approach has helped forge deeper connections with donors and corporations that help support the institute’s postdoctorate and graduate student positions, along with its internship program. The institute and its fellows consider these positions and programs critical to fulfilling its mission of training the next generation of policy leaders.
According to Matthews, the most important aspect of the internship program is exposing undergraduates to a new way of thinking — especially those who don’t end up with careers in public policy fields.
“Most interns come to us with a science background, but over time they really start to understand the impact of policy,” Matthews said. “When they go off to medical school or graduate school, they leave with a better understanding of the social implications of their work.”
More than 30 years after its founding, the Baker Institute is still evolving — not just in terms of the issues it tackles, but in how it trains experts to think like policymakers.
In the past two years, according to Satterfield, the institute launched a new initiative — the James A. Baker III Policy Leadership Program — which provides continuing education opportunities for professionals to learn about policymaking. “We’re taking established researchers — whether in medicine, science or engineering — and teaching them how to apply their expertise to public policy. It’s one thing to have the knowledge. It’s another to know how to translate that knowledge into real-world impact.”
That sense of translation between practice and policy — of building bridges between research and action — doesn’t just live in white papers or working groups. It lives in hallway conversations, intern projects and real-time dialogues with students and the Houston community.
“Watching our students begin to master that art has been beautiful,” said Medlock. “It’s what’s emblazoned on the front of this building — bridging the world of ideas and the world of action.”
Of course, there are also some interns and students who never leave. One of those is former graduate student Kenny Evans, who joined the Baker Institute’s Science and Technology Policy program during his Ph.D. work at Rice in 2008. Evans still recalls his first meeting with Lane to discuss how his research could contribute to the institute’s work.
“Dr. Lane asked me, ‘So, you want to change the world?’ To which I replied, ‘Of course, but how do I do that?’” Evans said. “We’re still working on changing the world, and I hope we do a little bit every day as part of this work.”
Evans is now a Baker Institute fellow in science, technology and innovation and the assistant director for innovation policy at Rice’s Office of Innovation, where he works to connect Rice researchers with the entrepreneurial ecosystem across the Greater Houston community to promote innovation and economic development.
“We’re not trying to be Silicon Valley,” Evans said. “We want Rice to be an engine of growth — commercially, educationally and socially — not just for Rice, but across Houston’s broader innovation ecosystem. My job in particular is to help bridge the Baker Institute and that greater innovation community.”
That future-forward mindset, according to Lane, will require bold goals and even bolder commitments.
“Our future depends on the quality of education,” he said. “So the real moon shot is figuring out how to change the system to actually improve education across the board.”
As the Baker Institute looks ahead, its continued success will be built upon the strong foundation of its mission: staying grounded in intellectual rigor while daring to imagine what comes next.