The $661,000 funding supports a four-year research program to develop new biostatistical methodologies to understand the complexities involved in prenatal alcohol exposure and fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD), the most common preventable cause of neurodevelopmental disabilities. The work is motivated by challenges arising in the synthesis of data from six large NIH-funded cohort studies conducted over the past 50 years.
Cook’s primary research is in the development and application of statistical methods for public health. His specific areas of interest include the analysis of life history data, longitudinal data, incomplete data, sequential methods, multivariate analysis, clinical trial design and the assessment of diagnostic tests.
Among his many accolades, Cook holds a Faculty of Mathematics Research Chair, was appointed University Professor and held Canada Research Chairs on two separate occasions. He was recently appointed to the Royal Society of Canada.
Cook’s co-principal investigator on the research program is Louise Ryan of the University of Technology Sydney. Co-investigators include Robert Carter (Columbia), Joseph Jacobson (Wayne State) and Sandra Jacobson (Wayne State), and postdoctoral fellows Drs. Tugba Akkaya-Hocagil (Waterloo) and KD Dang (UTS) have played important roles in this ongoing research.
Read more about the research program on the CIHR webpage.