Dr. Cook has been extensively involved in the development and evaluation of early intervention for children and families in populations facing challenges of poverty, disabilities, and dual language acquisition. She has worked on the national Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project and has extensive experience as a program evaluator. Currently she is a member of the Collaborative for Understanding the Pedagogy of Infant/Toddler Development (CUPID), which is a group of 35 scholars from 20 U.S. universities who have joined to together to understand how to better educate the infant/ programs toddler workforce. Her work includes providing professional development and consulting to programs to improve parent engagement and caregiver-child engagement. She co-developed the PICCOLO (Parenting Interactions with Children: Checklist of Observations Linked to Outcomes) measure of developmental parenting and caregiving and the HOVRS (Home Visit Rating Scales) observational measure of home visitor effectiveness. Her recent research has focused on early parenting and caregiving behaviors that predict attachment security and self-regulation and their influence on later child outcomes, specifically school readiness.