Molly Cooke, M.D. FACP, Professor of Medicine, holds the William G. Irwin Endowed Chair as Director of The Haile T. Debas Academy of Medical Educators at the University of California, San Francisco.

Dr. Cooke has been active in medical education program development and educational research throughout her career. An awardee of HRSA funding for the "Interdisciplinary Generalist Curriculum", she served as the founding director of "Foundations of Patient Care," an innovative six-quarter, preceptorship-based course for first- and second-year medical students. Dr. Cooke has taught in the Parnassus Integrated Student Clinical ExperienceS (PISCES) since its inception and advises a research group that is studying longitudinal integrated clinical experiences to replace the conventional third year of medical school at three sites nationally. A distinguished teacher, Dr. Cooke has twice received the Kaiser Family Foundation Teaching Award as well as a UCSF Academic Senate Award for Distinction in Teaching. In 2006, she was awarded the AOA/Robert J. Glaser Distinguished Teacher Award by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC); in 2010, she received the Career Achievement Award in Education from the Society for General Internal Medicine.

As a Senior Scholar of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, she co-directed a national study of medical education. This work culminated in the text, Educating Physicians: A Call for Reform of Medical School and Residency, co-authored with Drs. David Irby and Bridget O'Brien, published in June 2010 by Jossey-Bass/Wiley.

Dr. Cooke is a practicing internist with a special interest in HIV and other complex chronic illnesses. She has advised the AMA, the American College of Physicians (ACP), and the AAMC on clinical care and ethical and policy issues in the HIV epidemic, and was a founding co-director of the AIDS Task Force of the Society for General Internal Medicine. She testified before both National Commissions on AIDS (1988 and 1990). She was a Department of Health and Human Services Primary Care Health Policy Fellow in 2004 and has been repeatedly selected by her peers as one of "America's Best Doctors." Governor of the Northern California chapter of the American College of Physicians from 2004 to 2009, she currently serves as a Regent and will become President-elect of the College in April 2012.

Dr. Cooke is a graduate of Stanford University. She received her medical degree from Stanford University School of Medicine. She did her residency training at the University of California, San Francisco where she also served as chief resident in medicine and did a Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation Fellowship focusing on ethics.