Dr. Chook was born in Perak, Malaysia in 1965. After completing high school in her hometown Teluk Intan, she received an A.B. degree in Chemistry and Biology (major at Haverford College) from Bryn Mawr College in 1988. She received a Ph.D. in Biophysics in 1994 from Harvard University, where she studied the structures and mechanism of chorismate mutase with William Lipscomb. Her postdoctoral work was with Emil Pai and Tony Pawson in Toronto studying signal transduction in the Ras pathway, and with Günter Blobel at the Rockefeller University studying the mechanisms of nuclear import. In December of 2001, Dr Chook joined the Department of Pharmacology at U.T. Southwestern Medical Center as an Assistant Professor and Eugenne McDermott Scholar in Biomedical Research. The Chook laboratory aims to understand mechanisms of nucleocytoplasmic transport by Karyopherinβs (Kapβs), classify nuclear traffic, and discover how Kapβs organize and regulate cellular functions. They seek to discover these roles of Kapβs through a combination of structural, biochemical, biophysical, bioinformatics and cell biological investigations focused on Kapβ-substrate interactions.
