Leigh McCook, division chief of the socio-technical division within the Georgia Tech Research Institute Information and Communications Laboratory (GTRI-ICL), has been named deputy director of  the Institute for People and Technology at Georgia Tech. Her appointment is effective Oct. 1, 2013.

“Leigh is an excellent person to fill this important role,” said Beth Mynatt, IPaT executive director. “Her coalition-building experience will strengthen connections throughout Georgia Tech’s research ecosystem and will bring more energy and attention to our efforts in education and humanitarian systems.”

McCook is replacing Jeff Evans, recently named director of GTRI-ICL. In his role as IPaT deputy director, Evans started the integration process of GTRI's applied capabilities with IPaT research in health care, education, humanitarian systems and media. He helped build international and industry partnerships, as well as multidisciplinary “living lab” test beds.

As deputy director, McCook will be working to strengthen such partnerships and build new research collaborations across the Georgia Tech campus. While she will continue to conduct research, McCook's focus will be on growing IPaT’s research portfolio of federal and industry projects, particularly in education and humanitarian systems.

As a GTRI Principal Research Associate, and Program Manager for Homeland Security/Emergency Response programs, McCook has more than 20 years of research management and program director experience. She has successfully directed outreach programs through regional and national centers funded by numerous federal and state agencies. In support of these programs, she was responsible for a range of projects: outreach, training, exercises, planning, technology development and integration, and policy.

She worked closely with the State of Georgia in homeland security and emergency response capacities, including: building stakeholder consensus, developing regional response plans and enhancement plans for the state to submit to the Department of Homeland Security, identification of technology needs to enhance emergency response, implementation and assessment of technology programs, and designing and implementing exercise and training programs.

McCook’s experience also includes serving as Associate Director for Technology Transfer and Outreach for EPA’s Hazardous Substance Research Centers/South & Southwest and Associate Director of Center for Emergency Response Technology Instruction and Policy. In these areas she was charged with building consortiums of academia, government, and NGOs to support research and technology transfer activities.

In education, McCook has worked to consolidate and direct GTRI's K-12 science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) program efforts, building bridges between the Center for Education Integrating Science Math and Computing (CEISMC), Center for Teaching & Learning, and others.

"I am very excited about the opportunities to work even more closely with IPaT and their extended team,” McCook said. “They have made great accomplishments in the past two years, and Beth has a strong vision for moving IPaT forward in the coming years.  I am encouraged to work with her and IPaT on accomplishing these goals, as I focus particularly on humanitarian response and education while bringing even more of GTRI to these activities."