Dr. Irun Cohen was trained as a physician at Northwestern University Medical School and did a residency in pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. Since 1968 he has been involved in research in immunology. Dr. Cohen is the Mauerberger Professor of Immunology at the Department of Immunology of the Weizmann Institute of Science. He has served as director European Collaboration on TCV sponsored by the European Medical Research Councils of the European Science Foundation; director Robert Koch-Minerva Center for Research in Autoimmune Diseases at the Weizmann Institute; director Center for the Study of Emerging Diseases Jerusalem; Chairman Committee for the Re-accreditation of Israeli Medical Schools The Council for Higher Education Israel; executive director The National Center for T-cell Vaccination; member of the Executive Committee of The National Center for Complexity Science; and director of the National Institute of Biotechnology in the Negev Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Dr. Cohen was awarded the Robert Koch Prize Federal Republic of Germany for his work on autoimmunity. He is a Highly Cited Researcher (ISI) with over 445 professional publications including the book Tending Adam�s Garden: Evolving the Cognitive Immune Self (Academic Press 2000). His major contributions include development of cloned T-cells as functional probes for the analysis of autoimmune diseases; discovery of immune regulation by T-cell vaccination; development of the concept of the immunological homunculus in the regulation of autoimmunity natural and pathogenic; peptide vaccination therapy (peptide p277) of type 1 Autoimmune Diabetes (presently entering Phase III clinical trials); co-inventor of Reactive Animation (a computer-assisted precise visual language for interactive and dynamic simulation of complex systems); and development of the antigen microarray chip for bioinformatic analysis of immune system patterns. |