Dr. Marcus Cooke, professor and chair of the Department of Molecular Biosciences. (Photo courtesy of Dr. Cooke)
Dr. Marcus Cooke, professor and chair of the Department of Molecular Biosciences (MBS) in the USF College of Arts and Sciences (CAS), has been invited to join the prestigious international honor society of science and engineering, Sigma Xi.
Membership to Sigma Xi is by nomination only and Cooke was nominated by Dr. Richard L. Watkins, director of membership and chapters, and Daniela Giovannini Carlson, manager of membership and chapters.
To be considered for admission, one must have shown "noteworthy achievement as an original investigator.”
Sigma Xi, also known as the Scientific Research Honor Society, is one of the oldest and largest scientific organizations in the world, with a history of service to science and society for more than 125 years, according to their website, and is composed of scientists and engineers from around the globe whose research are focused in areas of science and technology. More than 200 Nobel Prize winners have been members.
Sigma Xi chapters can be found at colleges and universities, government laboratories, and industry research centers. Its USF chapter was chartered in 2018.
Cooke has 129 publications, an h-index of 44, 9,428 citations, and is among the top two percent of most cited researchers world-wide.
“The membership of Sigma Xi includes some of the world's top scientists. Now, while I may not be in that category, it adds definite gravitas to Sigma Xi,” he said.
Cooke, who just recently completed his first year as chair of MBS, has been overseeing many changes within the department, including a revamp of structure to better emphasize focus areas in bacterial pathogenesis, biomedical science, genome integrity, molecular biophysics and systems biology, and STEM education.
His work on adductomics continues to accelerate discovery about the role of adducts in health and disease.
“This work is leading to some exciting papers this year in top journals such as Environmental Science & Technology and Science of the Total Environment. Most recently, this work has led to the formation of the International Adductomics Consortium (IAC), bringing together some of the top names in the DNA adduct field to promote collaboration and establish guidelines and best practices,” he explained.
Cooke and his colleagues are also members of the Exposomics Consortium, the goal of which is to define the exposome in a way that is useful to those in health care and public health, to identify gaps in knowledge or technique, and to help develop a new generation of scientists who focus on these complex environmental influences on health.
His membership into Sigma Xi is for a lifetime.
“I was honored to be invited, and it's nice to realize just how widely my work must be read,” Cooke said.