Where Are They Now: Alan Cohen
Whether penning poetry and prose, moving halfway around the world, or searching for the keys to a healthier future, Alan Cohen isn’t afraid to jump.
As a high school student, Alan Cohen (IAA 91-93) was already thinking outside the box when he convinced his parents to let him leave home to study creative writing at Interlochen Arts Academy. It was just the first of many leaps he made to get from Holland, Michigan, to leading a research lab at Columbia University. At Interlochen, Alan focused on poetry and dug into a class on Western literature, which he credits with teaching him to see things from different perspectives, while his physics and chemistry classes laid the foundation for his career as an integrative biologist.
His post-Interlochen leaps included teaching English and working in restaurants in Japan before finishing his B.S. at University of Michigan and his Ph.D. at University of Missouri–St. Louis. Over the next decade, his research career took him to Baltimore, Toronto, and Sherbrooke, Quebec, where he refined his research interests to focus on the biology of health and aging. Now Chair in Biological Complexity and Healthy Longevity at Columbia University, Alan and his team use novel statistics to investigate how physiological systems in the human body work together in dynamic balance to create intrinsic health and wellbeing.
“I like to think outside the box. As a scientist, it’s a high risk, high reward perspective that comes from questioning the foundations of everything. That’s something I learned at Interlochen. I gained the confidence to trust myself, to make intuitive leaps, even if it’s not what everyone else is doing. Interlochen gives courage to kids who might not fit in other places by saying, ‘You’re okay being who you are. Run with it and do your thing.’