Associate Professor Sandy Cook was presented with the 2016 Master Scholar Award by the International Association of Medical Science Educators (IAMSE) during the 2016 IAMSE meeting this June in the Netherlands. The Master Scholar Award recognises an IAMSE member who has a distinguished record of educational scholarship, which can include educational research or the spread of excellent approaches in teaching and education.  

During her time at Duke-NUS Medical School (Duke-NUS) Assoc Prof Cook has been a champion of curriculum and educator development. She joined Duke-NUS in June 2006 as the Associate Dean for Curriculum Development and as the head of the department of Medical Education, Research and Development (MERE) to help the then young Duke-NUS to lay down its curriculum and teaching pedagogy.

In 2012 she began working with the Academic Medicine Education Institute (AM.EI), a joint venture with Duke-NUS and SingHealth, to help shape healthcare education and the academic progression of educators. In 2014, Assoc Prof Cook was accepted into the NUS Teaching Academy as a Fellow.

Assoc Prof Sandy Cook’s overall research has focused in the area of developing and evaluating educational programmes for various chronic diseases (such as diabetes, sleep medicine disorders, asthma, and geriatrics). In addition, her scope includes work on clinical skills assessment, as well as faculty development efforts in the area of the educational methodology (i.e., Team-based learning (TBL)), scholarship of Education and educational research.