Experts in the News

Political science fellow Mark P. Jones considered how the killing of George Floyd may impact the Texas Democratic Senate runoff election.

As the coronavirus outbreak picks up speed in Houston, fellow Peter Hotez said state and local leaders must intervene. "We have to learn our lesson. We have to redo everything that we did. As frustrating as it is, we have to go back to containment mode," he said. In a separate interview with MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, Hotez said the lack of a federal plan makes the response more difficult. The impact of the pandemic on low-income neighborhoods is a "humanitarian catastrophe," he said. Watch the interview here.

Former Harris County Judge Ed Emmett has been named a fellow in energy and transportation policy at the Baker Institute.  At the institute, Emmett, who managed the nation’s third-largest county for more than 11 years, will serve as the lead of the inaugural Houston Global Freight Summit. Emmett’s research will also focus on carbon-capture sequestration and hydrogen in the Gulf Coast region. 

“We want to kick the tires really hard on VotingWorks’ vote by mail system to make sure we find any problems well before November,” said Baker Institute faculty scholar Dan Wallach about the work he and others are doing to improve open-source technology for voting by mail.

In an article about the growing strains on area hospitals, health economics fellow Vivian Ho noted that Houston's public hospitals, Ben Taub and Lyndon B. Johnson, do not have the financial resources to convert random areas into ICUs. “The problem is that, of course, there are going to be more patients who are going to be going to Ben Taub” because the virus is disproportionately affecting Black and Latino people in low-income communities, and Ben Taub is traditionally the safety net for those without health insurance.