Nicholas A Cook

Nicholas A Cook is an Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Duke University's Trinity College of Arts & Sciences. His research focuses on high-dimensional probability, random matrices, random graphs, and large deviations theory. He holds a Ph.D. from UCLA (2016), advised by Terence Tao, and has held postdoctoral positions at Stanford and UCLA. Cook has received the Bernoulli Society New Researcher Award (2019).

Education:

• Ph.D. in Mathematics, University of California, Los Angeles (2016)
• Bachelor's degree (not detailed)

Research Interests: High-dimensional probability, random matrix theory (including Wigner matrices, Ginibre ensembles, and non-Hermitian matrices), random graph theory (sparse ERGMs, regular digraphs), large deviations for subgraph counts, universality phenomena, and applications to numerical analysis and mathematical physics. His work often intersects with combinatorics, functional analysis, and statistical mechanics.

Grants & Awards:

• NSF RTG Grant: Training Tomorrow's Workforce in Analysis and Applications (Co-PI, 2021–2026)
• NSF Grant: Large Deviations and Extremes for Random Matrices, Tensors, and Fields (PI, 2022–2025)
• Stein Fellowship, Stanford University (2019–2020)
• Bernoulli Society New Researcher Award (2019)

Advising:

• PhD advisee: Haotian Gu (2021–present)
• Undergraduate mentorships: DOMath research project on Brascamp–Lieb inequalities (2022) and Pengda Liu's honors thesis (2019–2020)

Teaching:

• Spring 2025: On leave at Berkeley SLMath Institute
• Fall 2025: Teaching Math 690-40 (Introduction to Random Matrix Theory)