Professor Cook's research is aimed at developing decision support tools for modeling performance and identifying best practice in organizations. This area of research is particularly applicable in analyzing organizations in service-sector settings such as health care, education and financial services, where both quantitative and qualitative data may be present. The central construct used is a mathematical programming structure referred to as data envelopment analysis. The tools are designed to aid in the identification of those organizations or units that make up the efficient frontiers of best performance, and to set improvement targets for inefficient or non-frontier units.

Professor Pastor's past research fields included semi-infinite programming and location science; nowadays, his two research areas are banking and efficiency analysis. He has served on the editorial review or advisory board of more than 20 international journals. He has authored or co-authored 9 books in various fields of mathematics and has published over 130 research papers, half of them related to DEA. He is ranked as one of the top 20 DEA authors with respect to citation impact measures. Professionally, Prof. Pastor served as Vice-president and President of the Spanish Statistical and Operations Research Society (SEIO). He was elected as President of his current University for the 2011-2019 period. Prof. Pastor was a member of the regional government of the Autonomous Region of Valencia, Spain, for three years, 2004 to 2007, serving as General Director for Research and Technological Transfer. Recently, the Spanish Scientists Association has recognized Prof. Pastor as one of the top three Spanish scientists in year 2013. At the beginning of 2015, he became a member of the Spanish Statistical Council.