Every year, the Cohn Family Foundation provides grant funding to support junior faculty at RUSH University who are mentees in the RUSH Research Mentoring Program.
The Cohn Fellowship allows mentees to gather preliminary data for research proposals and continue their research activities.
Class of 2025 Cohn Fellows
The following faculty members were selected as the Class of 2025 Cohn Fellows after a very competitive process.
Ana V. Chee, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Department of Orthopedic Surgery at Rush Medical College. Her research focuses on understanding the underlying molecular mechanisms of back pain and designing and testing biological therapies to combat these diseases. Using intervertebral disc tissue cultures, she has studied inflammatory chemokines and cytokines released by disc cells; the function of immune cell receptors on disc cells; and tested anti-inflammatory treatments to reverse the inflammatory process. Using preclinical models, she has studied disc degeneration and back pain and tested cell therapies and anti-inflammatory treatments.
Her Cohn Fellowship research will utilize intervertebral disc tissues retrieved from spine surgeries to characterize T cell populations in the intervertebral disc that contribute to inflammation and chronic back pain, and to identify sources of intervertebral disc inflammation that induce T cell migration and activation. Her studies will give us a better understanding of the role of T cells in back pain and help discover potential biological targets for back pain treatment.
Catherine Yuh, PhD, is an instructor in the Department of Orthopedic Surgery at Rush Medical College. Her research includes characterizing mechano-biological relationships in mechanoactive tissues and studying relationships between joint anatomical shape and tissue properties, in the context orthopedic disorders including femoroacetabular impingement syndrome and intervertebral disc degeneration.
Her Cohn Fellowship will investigate how joint shape is associated with underlying tissue structure and biochemistry in hips with femoroacetabular impingement syndrome. This research will contribute to a long-term collaborative effort to establish a platform of multi-modal approaches, including tissue characterization, imaging, motion analysis, and computational simulation, to study the multifaceted etiology of pre-arthritic hip disorders.
Hyejin Kim, PhD, RN, is an assistant professor in the Department of Adult Health and Gerontological Nursing at Rush University College of Nursing. Her research focuses on psychological and social aspects of late-life cognitive changes such as Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD) and mild cognitive impairment. Her training on ADRD caregiving stress in ethnically diverse populations has led her to a technology-based approach for detecting stress in Korean-American home care workers of persons with ADRD, a significant yet understudied ethnic group.
Her Cohn Fellowship research will use wearable technology (i.e., Ōura ring) to assess heart rate variability, an emerging stress biomarker, over time in Korean-American HCWs who provide care to Korean-Americans diagnosed with ADRD.
Jeffrey Schneider, PhD, is an assistant professor in the department of Microbial Pathogens and Immunity at Rush Medical College, where he is currently investigating HIV, COVID-19, breast cancer, and Alzheimer’s Disease. Schneider got his PhD from the University of Chicago where he studied biochemistry. He did his postdoctoral fellowship at Northwestern University in the laboratory of Dr. Thomas Hope, where he used these skills to tease apart mucosal antibody interactions in the context of HIV infection. During this time, he helped develop a platform to track antibodies in vivo through fluorophore conjugation and contributed to this body of research by helping to show that it takes a week for antibodies to reach the vaginal mucosal surface following IV injection. He received a K01 to use this platform to investigate how the timing of broadly neutralizing antibody injection affects distal site accumulation of virus following intravaginal challenge.
In this Cohn fellowship, Schneider will tease out the cellular populations involved in HIV rebound in the brain, following cART cessation, in order to gain insight into potential ways of targeting this viral reservoir.
Steven P. Mell, PhD, is an instructor in the Department of Orthopedic Surgery. His research focuses on studying the mechanical behavior of natural and artificial human joints. Specifically, he is interested in studying the in vivo behavior, failure and disease processes of orthopaedic implants and natural joints through computational modeling. During his PhD, he investigated total knee replacement wear through both computational and experimental methods. He has been active in the study of patella-femoral joint mechanics, total hip replacement taper assembly, and the mechanical behavior of articular cartilage.
For his Cohn Fellowship research, Mell will study how FAI disease severity affects hip joint contact mechanics. He will use motion analysis and musculoskeletal modelling to compare joint contact forces before and after hip arthroscopy for cam type femoroacetabular impingement (FAI) using high throughput markerless motion capture and develop finite element models of a cam type FAI population using statistical shape modeling. If successful, this research will provide insight into how arthroscopic surgery and FAI disease severity affect hip joint mechanics, with an overarching goal of identifying modifiable factors of FAI associated with hip osteoarthritis development.
Class of 2024 Cohn Fellows
The following faculty members were selected as the Class of 2024 Cohn Fellows after a very competitive process.
Adrian Mansini, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Dermatology at RUSH Medical College. He earned his PhD in molecular biology at the Universidad of Buenos Aires, Argentina. He completed his first postdoctoral fellowship at the Hormel Institute, University of Minnesota, and his second postdoctoral fellowship at the Masonic Cancer Center, University of Minnesota.
His research focuses on metastatic prostate cancer. He is particularly interested in developing novel biomarkers of prostate cancer progression and metastasis. Also, he is developing a new cell-based therapy for prostate cancer bone metastasis.
His Cohn Fellowship research will establish the significance of tumor MD2 as a predictor of aggressiveness and metastasis in prostate cancer and determine the efficacy of targeting MD2 as a therapeutic approach in two murine models of prostate cancer metastasis. The result will be novel and significantly impactful as these data will provide proof of principle for further development and future clinical trials.
Alia Obeidat, BDS, PhD, is an Instructor and Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Rheumatology, RUSH Medical College. Her research focuses on characterizing the temporal and spatial neuroplasticity that occurs during osteoarthritis (OA), in addition to understanding the functional significance of these changes for OA disease, pain as well as joint integrity.
Her Cohn Fellowship research will investigate the role of mechanosensitive Mas-related G Protein-Coupled Receptor D (MrgprD) in weight bearing pain and knee hyperalgesia in murine post-traumatic osteoarthritis.
Brian T. David, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurosurgery in RUSH Medical College. His research focuses on spinal cord injury (SCI) and other disease/disorders of the central nervous system. His most recent work investigates the neuroinflammatory response to traumatic SCI, with an emphasis on some of the secondary injury components that arise in both the acute and chronic stages (e.g., pain, autonomic dysfunction, bone loss, and gut dysbiosis). He also uses cell transplantation and biomaterial implantation to better understand the consequences of SCI-induced inflammation and promote functional recovery.
His Cohn Fellowship research will determine if in vitro preconditioning (through the application of hypoxia mimetics) will increase the survival of mesenchymal stem cells following their transplantation into the injured spinal cord, and if this enhanced survival will be better able to increase the cells’ ability to modulate the inflammatory response at the injury site. He will also determine if this reduction in inflammation translates into superior recovery of locomotor, sensory, and autonomic function.
Chuka Nestor Emezue, Ph.D., MPH, MPA, CHES®, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Women, Children and Family Nursing at the RUSH College of Nursing. His research focuses on using community-based and technology-enhanced interventions to improve the health, wellbeing, economic stability, and prospects of young boys and men impacted by co-occurring violence, substance use, and mental health disorders.
For his Cohn Fellowship, he will begin developing and adapting a novel intervention called FatherlyACT -- a father-led relationship violence prevention program with violence-involved Black father-son dyads implemented with in-person and online components and based on the Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). ACT is a trauma- and healing-oriented form of cognitive behavioral therapy. FatherlyACT aims to promote the safety and psychological wellbeing of Black mothers and children exposed to domestic violence by improving violent fathers’ parenting skills and reducing the intergenerational transfer of violence.
Jonathan A. Gustafson, PhD, is an Instructor in the Department of Orthopedic Surgery and Director of Research for the RUSH-IBTS International Fellowship Program. His research focuses on studying the mechanics of motion and how the aging process, as well as musculoskeletal injuries and diseases, impact joint mechanics. His long-term goal is to identify key modifiable risk factors that contribute to functional movement deficits and develop personalized intervention strategies to optimize joint health. His most recent work has been aimed at characterizing the in vivo behavior of both natural joints and orthopedic implants using experimental and computational biomechanical approaches.
His Cohn Fellowship research will determine the relationship between muscle-tendon quality, muscle strength, and self-reported shoulder joint function in patients with and without rotator cuff tear arthropathy undergoing reverse total shoulder arthroplasty. He will also investigate the interaction of varying implant, surgical, and patient-specific factors that drive post-surgical shoulder function in both high functioning and low functioning patients following reverse total shoulder arthroplasty.
Sarah Sansom, DO, MS, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases in RUSH Medical College. Her research focuses on the epidemiology and prevention of antimicrobial-resistant pathogens in healthcare facilities.
Her Cohn Fellowship research will investigate the impact of clinical decision support, implemented as a computerized Best Practice Alert, for the ordering of urine cultures from patients with a urinary catheter. Catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTIs) are common healthcare-associated infections, but inappropriate ordering of urine cultures can lead to overdiagnosis. False diagnosis of a CAUTI causes important patient harms, including unnecessary antibiotic exposure.
She will assess clinical outcomes, including both potential benefits and harms, as a result of this Best Practice Alert. If successful, this low-cost intervention can be easily translated to other healthcare settings to improve urine culture diagnostic accuracy and decrease unnecessary antibiotic use.
Uzma Akhtar, PhD, AuD, is an Assistant Professor in the Communication Disorders and Sciences department in the College of Health Sciences at RUSH University Medical Center. Her research focuses on healthy aging and hearing and factors that contribute to age-related hearing loss.
Her Cohn Fellowship research will focus on understanding if individuals exposed to loud noises show signs of age-related hearing loss sooner than individuals without a history of exposure to loud noises.
With this knowledge, Dr. Akhtar and her team will be able to design and test diagnostic protocols and individualized interventions to reducing the combined effects of noise- and age-related hearing loss.
If you are interested in applying for the Cohn Fellowship next year, email us at mentoringprograms@rush.edu.