Mitchell Cohen, MD, has been named associate vice chair of basic and translational research in the University of Colorado Department of Surgery.
In his new role, Cohen will work with Elizabeth J. Kovacs, PhD, vice chair of research, to advance the research mission of the department, with particular focus on deepening and broadening the department’s research portfolio.
This includes basic and translational science, outcomes, education, and clinical/health services research, as well as innovation pathways.
“We, as the Department of Surgery, want to be the leader for comprehensive science and non-siloed, collaborative science, both within the department and across the CU Anschutz Medical Campus,” says Cohen, professor of GI, trauma, and endocrine surgery. “We also want to reach out to the rest of the University of Colorado campuses and beyond — to collaborators outside of the University, both nationally and internationally.”
Experience with trauma research
As co-leader of the surgery department’s Trauma Research Center and co-director of the newly formed Critical Illness and Injury Research Center (CIIRC), Cohen has experience leading research teams to solve big problems of the day. It’s an area he hopes to further within the Department of Surgery as he assumes his new role.
“CIIRC was developed to do big, non-siloed science across the Department of Surgery and throughout the larger CU medical campus on topics germane to critical illness and injury: trauma, burn, sepsis, the next pandemic, nuclear radiation, chemical injury, all the things that the funding agencies and the government are now calling threat X,” he says. “To really solve big problems, you need big, comprehensive capability. We wanted to stand up this capability from basic science all the way to implementation science and health services.”
Science through humanities
A political science major as an undergraduate at Brandeis University, Cohen entered the world of medicine through a then-new humanities in medicine program at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.
“It was designed to bring humanities and social sciences majors who might not otherwise apply to medical school into medical school,” Cohen says. “I was part of one of the inaugural classes, but I was a bit of an anomaly because I did a lot of science research as an undergrad.”
After training at Rush University and Loyola University in his hometown of Chicago, Cohen spent almost 15 years as a faculty member at the University of California, San Francisco, doing his clinical practice at San Francisco General Hospital. He brings all of that experience — plus a few years spent as a fly-fishing guide in southwestern Colorado — to his new role in the Department of Surgery.
“Dr. Cohen is an amazing surgeon-scientist, scholar, and mentor,” Kovacs says. “I am thrilled to have him as part of the research team.”
In his new position, Cohen is most excited about harnessing the existing research resources in the Department of Surgery and ensuring they are used to their full advantage.
“I’d like to become the one-stop shop that the funding agencies and industry and everyone else can come to,” he says. “What’s unique about the University of Colorado is that we are the only game in town. We have a seemingly never-ending list of capabilities and expertise. It's like being a kid in a candy store, in the best possible way. There’s nothing we can’t study, measure, implement, or test.”
