The CDC Leaders

"With respect to science, CDC needs to do and support the best in cutting-edge science while maintaining those parts of CDC that are unique global resources."

- Mitchell L. Cohen, MD

Rear Admiral Mitchell L. Cohen, MD, USPHS

Director, Coordinating Center for Infectious Diseases, Assistant Surgeon General

RADM Mitchell L. Cohen, M.D., was appointed director of CDC’s Coordinating Center for Infectious Diseases (CCID) in May 2004. As the director, he provides leadership for CDC’s largest, most complex coordinating center which includes the National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention; National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases; National Center for Preparedness, Detection, and Control of Infectious Diseases; National Center for Zoonotic, Vector-Borne and Enteric Diseases. When combined, these national centers represent a budget of roughly $4.0 billion and employ over 3000 staff nationally and internationally.

Dr. Cohen received his undergraduate and medical degrees from Duke University. His postgraduate training was in internal medicine at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, and in infectious diseases at the University of Washington in Seattle.

When Dr. Cohen was a third-year medical student taking an infectious disease elective, he was working in the virology lab at Duke University. At the time there was an epidemic of Echo 18 viral meningitis in the community, and he became involved in testing a number of specimens from this epidemic. He met and worked with the state Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) officer who was conducting the overall investigation and realized that with respect to medicine he was most interested in infectious diseases, and began considering a career at CDC. After finishing his training in internal medicine he came to CDC in 1976 to become and EIS officer assigned to Enteric Disease Branch, Atlanta (1976). While Dr. Cohen worked in the Enteric Disease Branch, he became involved in the Legionnaires outbreak.

After his EIS training, Dr, Cohen spent one year in the Hospital Infections Branch pursuing an interest in antibiotic resistance. From 1979 to 1981, CDC sent him for a fellowship at the University of Washington to work in the field of infectious disease. While there, he worked in Stanley Falkow's laboratory studying antibiotic resistance and staphylococci associated with toxic shock syndrome. He returned to CDC with skills in molecular biology, and set up a laboratory to study resistance and to epidemiologically fingerprint microorganisms. During the early '80s, although most of his work was in enteric diseases such as E. coli O157:H7, he became involved in respiratory diseases, including TB and Legionnaires disease, both from a laboratory and epidemiological perspective.

In the mid 1980s, Dr. Cohen became increasingly interested in leadership and management and moved to the Office of the Director in the Division of Bacterial Diseases, where he was the director for 14 years.

Dr. Cohen is an internationally recognized scientist and public health leader. He is a Fellow in the American College of Physicians, the Infectious Diseases Society of America, and the American Academy of Microbiology.