Cohen received his B.S. in microbiology in 1985 and his M.S. in zoology in 1989 from the University of Maryland. He received his Ph.D. in biophysics from the University of Maryland, School of Medicine, in 1994 for his work on viscerosensory neuronal excitability. Cohen completed postdoctoral training at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, where he focused on synaptic plasticity in brain slices. His lab studies the physiological mechanisms underlying and contributing to cognitive impairment caused by traumatic brain injury. Cohen recently received a prestigious MERIT award from the National Institutes of Health.