Jerri M. Rook

Jerri M. Rook, PhD, is Associate Professor of Pharmacology and Director of In Vivo & Behavioral Pharmacology for the Warren Center for Neuroscience Drug Discovery at Vanderbilt University. Dr. Rook received her B.A. in Biology and Chemistry from Drury University and her Ph.D. in Pharmacology, Toxicology and Therapeutics at the University of Kansas Medical Center. She then pursued her postdoctoral studies at Vanderbilt University in the laboratory of P. Jeffrey Conn, Ph.D. before accepting a faculty position in the Department of Pharmacology. As the Director of In Vivo & Behavioral Pharmacology for the Warren Center for Neuroscience Drug Discovery, Dr. Rook is currently responsible for driving the in vivo DMPK, behavioral, and biomarker studies for nine active drug discovery programs.

Dr. Rook has received multiple awards for her scientific contributions, including the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation and Harrington Discovery Institute Scholar Award, the Butler-Williams Scholars Award from the National Institute on Aging, the National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) ASPET Training in Neurotherapeutics Discovery and Development for Academic Scientists Award, the Vanderbilt Faculty Research Scholar Award, and the 2020 Melvin R. Goodes Prize for Excellence in Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery.

Dr. Rook has served on numerous review panels for the NIH, Australian National Health and Medical Research Council, and United Kingdom Research and Innovation Medical Research Council. In addition to serving as a reviewer and guest editor for several scientific journals, she has served on the Scientific Advisory Board for the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation since 2014.

Dr. Rook is a highly trained behavioral and systems neuropharmacologist who has a great deal of expertise with the use of molecular, behavioral and imaging techniques to study the in vivo effects of G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) in preclinical rodent models. Dr. Rook’s multidisciplinary, translational research is currently funded by the National Institute on Aging, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, and Ono Pharmaceutical Co, Ltd.