After an Accomplished 41-Year Career in the Dept. of Psychiatry Dr. Glen Baker Isn't Quite Ready to Walk Away Just Yet

Dr. Glen Baker, who has played more feature roles than an Oscar winner over the course of his multifaceted 41-year career in the Department of Psychiatry, has retired.

1 January 2019

Dr. Glen Baker, who has played more feature roles than an Oscar winner over the course of his multifaceted 41-year career in the Department of Psychiatry, has retired.

Well, sort of. With an asterisk. In a manner of speaking.

Officially, Dr. Baker, 71, retired about 18 months ago as a Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Psychiatry. He was named Professor Emeritus shortly thereafter.

At that point one might assume Dr. Baker would bid adieu to his colleagues and students, not to mention Edmonton's long winters, and head off to a well-deserved rest at his second home in Summerland, B.C., on the shores of beautiful Okanagan Lake.

Or, one might expect him to jet off to exotic locales like Greece or Egypt - destinations that are high on his 'bucket list' - or perhaps to England, where he lived for several years, to indulge in his passion for collecting antiquarian books.

Well, turns out that's not the way Dr. Baker rolls. It's clear he still loves his work, and interacting with the students and Psychiatry Residents he mentors, far too much to simply close the door and turn the page. Which explains why Dr. Baker's retirement looks more like a kind of slow-motion tactical withdrawal than an exit.

Indeed, he spent the first 10 months of his (alleged) retirement filling in as Interim Chair of the Department of Pharmacology at the request of the late Dr. Richard Fedorak, former Dean of the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry.

Dr. Baker was a natural choice for such a leadership role. After all, at various times over the years he has also served as: Chair, Interim Chair, Acting Chair and Associate Chair for the Department of Psychiatry; Director of the Neurochemical Research Unit (NRU) (which he co-founded in 1979); and an Associate Vice-President (Research) for the University of Alberta.

I could go on, but you get the idea. Those are just some of the highlights. A full list of Dr. Baker's professional titles and various professional activities would fill most of this page.

Since he completed his assignment as Interim Chair of the Department of Pharmacology at the end of June 2018, Dr. Baker has refocused on his main passion: research.

"I have research funds for the next one and a half years, and I continue to supervise or co-supervise some graduate students, undergraduate students and Psychiatry Residents in research projects or courses," he explains.

Dr. Baker also still serves on a number of committees, but he expects to wrap up most if not all of those remaining commitments by early 2020.

"Most of my work is in the NRU. It involves lab research and mentoring graduate students and Psychiatry Residents. So I'm still teaching in that way, but now that I'm a Professor Emeritus, I've dropped most of my lecturing," he says.

"The best part of it all is seeing younger academic colleagues, including graduate and undergraduate students, postdoctoral fellows and Psychiatry Residents advancing in their careers and their personal lives. That's probably the most rewarding part of the job."

Dr. Baker's academic career began not far from his home town of Watrous, Sask., at the University of Saskatchewan, where he completed a BSP and an MSc in Pharmacy, followed by a PhD in Biological Psychiatry in 1974.

He spent the next three years in England, where he was a Medical Research Council of Canada postdoctoral fellow in the MRC Neuropharmacology Unit at the University of Birmingham Medical School.

"While I was in Birmingham I had some communication with Dr. Bill Dewhurst, who was then the Chair of the Department of Psychiatry at the U of A. Eventually I came back to Canada and took a job here in 1977, as an Assistant Professor, and I've been here ever since," he says.

"Even though I was not a Psychiatrist, I was made to feel welcome in the department not only by Dr. Dewhurst but by the other staff, and was fortunate to have as my mentors people like Drs. Roger Bland, Peter Hays, Geoff Hopkinson and Gordon King.

Two years after he arrived in Edmonton, Dr. Baker, Dr. Dewhurst, and Dr. Ron Coutts - a Professor in the Faculty of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences - teamed up to establish the NRU. Dr. Baker continued to head the NRU until 2013, when he was succeeded as Director by Dr. Ian Winship.

"The NRU is now in its 40th year, and it's still thriving and growing. Dr. Winship is doing a great job. We've seen a large number of really good people, including academics, trainees and support staff, who have come through the NRU over the past 40 years, and I feel really fortunate to have worked with them" he says.

Dr. Baker's research has largely focused on developing assays for neurochemical biomarkers and for drugs used to treat various psychiatric and neurological disorders.

"I've done a lot of work on the mechanisms of action and metabolism of antidepressants and antipsychotics. I've also done a fair bit of research on drug-drug interactions involving drugs used to treat psychiatric disorders. Many people who are being treated for mental illnesses are on multiple drugs, so you have to be aware of drug-drug interactions that could have adverse consequences."

"In recent years I've become more involved in research related to neuropsychiatry, studying neurological disorders in which there is a frequent occurrence of psychiatric symptoms. For example, we've been looking at some potential biomarkers in multiple sclerosis (MS) and how we might be able to affect some of the neurochemical changes that occur in MS," he says.

"That research has mainly been with animal models but we've also done some clinical work. In those areas I've worked with two colleagues at the U of A, Dr. Brad Kerr, an Associate Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine, and Dr. Chris Power, a Professor in the Division of Neurology."

Dr. Baker traces his fascination with the brain and how it functions to Dr. Jonathan Dimmock, now Professor Emeritus in the College of Pharmacy and Nutrition at the University of Saskatchewan.

"He was one of the best lecturers I ever had, and he really got me interested in antipsychotics and antidepressants in his medicinal chemistry course. So when the opportunity came up to move over to Psychiatry I took it."

Dr. Baker also credits a long list of current and former Faculty members and other colleagues for his success, including Dr. Klaus Gendemann, Dr. Alan Gordon, Dr. P.J. White, Eleanor Grant, Gail Rauw and Jordyce van Muyden. He also thanks key collaborators such as Drs. Jean-Michel Le Melledo, Kathryn Todd, Satya Kar, Serdar Dursun, Andrew Holt, Darrell Mousseau and Marco Leyton.

"These are the people with whom I have worked most closely in recent years, but I have been fortunate to have many other excellent colleagues, particularly in the mental health area, and if I named them all, it would be a very long list!" he says.

"When I look back over the past 40 years, the things we've learned about how the brain functions have been remarkable. We now know a great deal more about how chemical messengers (neurotransmitters) work, the many factors that interact with them, and the mechanisms of action of drugs acting on the brain. When I started research, we were focusing almost exclusively on neurons, but now we know that glial cells actually have many very important functions related directly to brain activity as well," he says.

"Research on the brain has advanced a great deal in the last four decades, and years from now it's going to be very interesting to look back on this period and see just how far we have progressed. Brain imaging is getting more and more sophisticated all the time. Many people are now exploring areas like machine learning and artificial intelligence to help with diagnosis and with predicting the occurrence of various mental illnesses," he adds.

"These are obviously very complex, but really exciting, areas. They are not fields in which I have been involved, but several other researchers in the Department of Psychiatry are continuing to work in these areas. Hopefully they will make great breakthroughs that will benefit people suffering from mental illnesses."