Kirsten Cook is the Frank M. Burke Chair in Taxation, the director of the Lyons School of Accounting, and a professor of accounting in the Rawls College of Business at Texas Tech University. After graduating with an Associate in Arts from McLennan Community College and a Bachelor of Business Administration and Master of Accountancy from Baylor University, he worked in the tax division at Jaynes, Reitmeier, Boyd & Therrell, PC before earning a PhD from Texas A&M University.

Cook taught for five years at the University of Arizona before joining the faculty at Texas Tech in 2013. He teaches undergraduate income tax accounting, graduate tax research and planning and a doctoral colloquium in tax accounting research. Cook has served on the dissertation advisory committees of more than a dozen doctoral students, chairing three. He also holds leadership positions in the American Taxation Association and the American Accounting Association Diversity Section, where he served as president in 2021-2022. He is an editor for Issues in Accounting Education and has served on the editorial review board of Journal of the American Taxation Association.

At Texas Tech, Cook has served on the Faculty Senate and as a Teaching Academy member and participated in the Texas Academic Leadership Academy. He has received the 2017 Excellence in Teaching Award, the 2021 Excellence in Faculty Service Award and the 2021 Jerry S. Rawls Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award from the Rawls College.

Cook's scholarship addresses taxation, earnings management, corporate social responsibility and diversity. He has published his work in Contemporary Accounting Research, Accounting Horizons, Decision Sciences, Human Resource Management, Issues in Accounting Education, Journal of the American Taxation Association, Journal of Business Finance & Accounting and Journal of Management Accounting Research.