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Robert M. Cook-Deegan

Research Professor of Public Policy Studies
Research Professor of Medicine

Prof. Cook-Deegan squandered his youth skiing powder on the flanks of Colorado’s peaks. He spent his summers in late high school and early college giving smallpox, DPT, and tetanus vaccines and penicillin shots in the Altiplano of northern Guatemala. He has participated in human rights missions to Panama (1987) and the Kurdish regions of southeastern Turkey and northern Iraq (1988 and 1991). And he has a day job at Duke.

Bob came to Duke in 2002 to join the then-nascent Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy, as director of its Center for Genome Ethics, Law & Policy. He is a physician and molecular biologist who spent twenty years in Washington, D.C., in various positions at the intersection of health, science, and policy. He will be teaching “A Political and Social History of Genomics” for Focus in the fall, and a grad/professional/ undergrad course, “Responsible Genomics,” in the spring.

His 15-year old daughter Maeve and wife Kathryn also call Alspaugh home. Maeve is a 10th-grader at Durham Academy. She does competitive rock-climbing with a local gym, and does cross-country, track, and swimming at school. Kath is in training as an analyst in Jungian Psychology in Zurich, Switzerland. The Cook-Deegans’ son Patrick is a senior at Brown, who spent the summer of 2006 biking from the northern (Chinese) to the southern (Cambodian) border of Laos to raise money for to build a school through Room to Read. This past year, he founded an organization, Transform Abroad, to raise money for high school students to have an experience abroad who do not have independent resources to do so. And this summer, 2007, he is in Kenya working with Dukies to build a school for girls, on the WiserGirls project organized by Sherryl Broverman of Duke's Department of Biology .

Students generally find Oshie the most amiable and lovable member of the family. Oshie is now seven years old. Her mom is a golden retriever (really), and the father a who-knows-what, apparently with black coat. Petting is encouraged. Of the dog.

http:// www.genome.duke.edu/centers/gelp

Resides Wife Kathryn and daughter Maeve

Office:242 North Bldg
668 0793
bob.cd@duke.edu
Residence: 103 Alspaugh (613-0911)