Biography
JJ Cohen was born in Montreal and attended McGill University, obtaining his BSc (Honors, Biochemistry), MSc (Endocrinology), PhD (Immunochemistry), and MD, CM degrees. He did a residency at the Royal Victoria Hospital, followed by postdoctoral fellowships with Henry Claman at the University of Colorado Medical School in Denver, and Avrion Mitchison at Mill Hill in London. He returned to Colorado as Assistant Professor, and is now Professor of Immunology and Medicine. The students at Colorado have given him the Excellence in Teaching Award every year since 1982 and he has 5 times been selected as Teacher of the Year. In addition to Dean'€™s, Chancellor'€™s, and President'€™s teaching awards, he was in 1992 made a Presidentâ€'s Teaching Scholar, the University'€™s highest teaching recognition. He was the ARCS Foundation "€œMan of the Year"€ in 1990. In 2001 he was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and in 2002 he received the national Alpha Omega Alpha Glaser Award as outstanding teacher of medicine. CU gave him the Thomas Jefferson Award in 2009. He has served on many NIH study sections and has been a consultant to NASA, the Arthritis Foundation, the Milheim Foundation, and Alpha Omega Alpha, of which he is a faculty member. Dr. Cohen is in constant demand to teach and talk around the world, and has held many honorary lectureships. He is consulting editor of The McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science & Technology. His research group was the first to show that cells have a genetic "suicide program"€ by which they can be eliminated from the body, in a paper that has been cited 2000 times.
In 1989 he founded the â€Mini-Medical School€ for the general public, a concept now being developed in over 100 schools in America, Canada, and Europe. In 2007 he was awarded a doctorate honoris causa by the Universite de Sherbrooke for his work in public education, and a DSc from McGill in 2011. In 2003 Dr. Cohen started the Colorado Cafe Scientifique, where ordinary people meet in a Denver pub to talk science. In 2007 he and Helen Macfarlane launched the CU Art in Science | Science in Art€ competition and exhibition. He is currently interested in the Black Death, the Old Friends Hypothesis, and the neurobiology of teaching, and spoke at COLTT 2010 on €œLecture 3.0: A Hack for Overclocked Wetware.
