LOS ANGELES (March 20, 2025) — Following a comprehensive national search, Cedars-Sinai has appointed David E. Cohen, MD, PhD, as the new chair of the Department of Medicine, effective July 1. Cohen, a longtime leader, scholar and mentor in academic medicine, has focused his research and clinical practice on obesity-related liver disease, diabetes and metabolic syndrome.
“Dr. Cohen has dedicated his career to advancing the highest-quality clinical care, biomedical research, medical education and program building,” said Shlomo Melmed, MB, ChB, executive vice president of Medicine and Health Sciences and dean of the Medical Faculty. “He is admired by students and colleagues alike as a kind and patient teacher who leads by example. We wish Dr. Cohen every success as he guides our Department of Medicine to its next level of achievement.”
Cohen joins Cedars-Sinai from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, where he is chief of the Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Endoscopy, and from Harvard Medical School, where he is professor of Medicine. He also previously was chief of the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology and the Vincent Astor Distinguished Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital.
“It is my honor to lead the Department of Medicine at Cedars-Sinai, among the most prestigious medical institutions in the world,” Cohen said. “I look forward to collaborating with faculty and staff as we provide the highest-quality care to patients and lead the innovative research that will improve their lives.”
For nearly three decades, Cohen led a successful National Institutes of Health-funded laboratory studying how fats control the way the liver processes nutrients and maintains the body’s energy balance, with a goal of finding new ways to manage obesity and related health problems, such as liver disease and Type 2 diabetes. He developed small molecules to help treat liver disease, diabetes and problems related to metabolic syndrome, which increases the risk of heart disease, diabetes, stroke and other conditions.
Cohen’s research has been published in prestigious peer-reviewed journals, including Nature Medicine, Nature Communications, Cell Metabolism, Journal of Clinical Investigation, Science Signaling, Hepatology and PNAS. He recently completed a five-year term as editor-in-chief of Hepatology.
Earlier in Cohen’s career, he was director of Hepatology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and director of the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology. He also held joint appointments in the departments of Medicine and Biochemistry at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.
Cohen is the recipient of the American Liver Foundation Distinguished Scientific Achievement Award, the American Liver Foundation Research Prize, an American Liver Foundation Liver Scholar Award, an International HDL Research Award, a Hirschl Career Scientist Award and an NIH MERIT Award. He also was an Established Investigator of the American Heart Association.
He is a fellow of the American Gastroenterological Association and of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases, and an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the Association of American Physicians and the Interurban Clinical Club.
Cohen received his medical degree from Harvard Medical School and the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology, and a PhD in physiology and biophysics from Harvard University. He completed an internal medicine residency as well as gastroenterology and hepatology fellowships at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
Read more in Cedars-Sinai’s Discoveries Magazine: The Worst Disease You’ve Never Heard Of
