Biography—

As associate vice president for research, Hooks oversees internal grants, awards and research personnel, managing an approximately $750,000 portfolio of internal research support funding and leading initiatives to support faculty, postdoctoral scholars and other research personnel.

Hooks has previously served as the interim department head for UGA’s Department of Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Sciences and the interim director of the UGA Center for Drug Discovery. She additionally leads the Office of Research’s strategic plan and serves as a liaison between the office, academic units, centers and institutes and faculty.

As an independent investigator, Hooks’ research has focused on signaling mechanisms and novel therapeutic strategies for cancer and neurological disease. Her research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Multiple Sclerosis Society and the Marsha Rivkin Center for Ovarian Cancer Research, and she has supervised a number of graduate and undergraduate students.

Outside of her service at UGA, Hooks has served as an executive committee member for the Molecular Pharmacology division of the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (ASPET), grant reviewer for the Marsha Rivkin Center for Ovarian Cancer and an editorial board member for ASPET’s peer-reviewed journal, Molecular Pharmacology. Hooks has published more than 80 peer-reviewed articles, book chapters and abstracts.

Hooks earned her bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from Clemson University and her doctorate in biochemistry from the University of Virginia. She also completed her postdoctoral research at the University of North Carolina’s Department of Pharmacology in the School of Medicine.