Jonathan Cohen - Research#

a) International standing in my research field

Jonathan Cohen's principal area of research has been bacterial sepsis. He has made major contributions both in basic science and translational clinical research. He has published in first-rank international journals on the role of nitric oxide in sepsis, on the immunology of TNF receptors, and on serum amyloid P protein. He was the first to describe the use of an anti-TNF monoclonal antibody in humans, and led major international phase III clinical trials in sepsis. His international standing is evidenced by the invited reviews published in Nature and more recently in Lancet Infect Disease.

b) Contributions to academic infectious diseases

At the time he qualified in medicine, academic infectious diseases was in state of torpor in the UK. With two colleagues he started a new scientific society, and then went on to create, from scratch, the academic department in the Royal Postgraduate Medical School, London, which subsequently became a power-house for the subject. He championed the joint training in infectious diseases and microbiology within the Royal Colleges, chairing the committee that brought about the programme that is now in place. His trainees now occupy many of the senior academic posts in UK infectious diseases that subsequently emerged. Later, he was invited to be the senior author of a major international text-reference on the subject, and recently was elected President of the International Society for Infectious Diseases.

c) Contributions to academic medicine and medical education

He was elected to the Fellowship and has served on the Council of the Academy of Medical Sciences. He has advised the UK government in various capacities, and served on MRC and chaired Cancer Research UK funding committees. He was invited to be a member of the panels for both the 2005 and 2008 UK Research Assessment exercises. Internationally, he has advised both the French and the German government academic bodies, and he has and continues to advise European academic institutions in the Netherlands, France and in Germany. He was the Founding Dean of the new Brighton and Sussex Medical School, creating from scratch a new medical school with a strong ethos of research and which has consistently been in the top three UK medical schools in terms of student scores for the quality of the teaching.