In recognition of an excellent paper entitled "A Review of Iron Oxide Copper-Gold Deposits, with Focus on the Wernecke Breccias, Yukon, Canada, as an Example of a Non-Magmatic End Member and Implications for IOCG Genesis and Classification."

Baker has extensive experience in IOCG research and has received other international awards for this work including the Lindgren Award from the Society of Economic Geologists. The IOCG research led to the idea of developing a classification scheme for IOCG deposits, a challenging and diverse group of deposits.

Baker received a B.Sc. (Hons) degree from the University of Wales, College of Cardiff in 1992 and a PhD from JCU in 1996. He carried out postdoctoral research at the Mineral Deposit Research Unit, University of British Columbia between 1996 and 1999.