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Cohen began studying multiple sclerosis (MS) in the 1980s when it was still considered an untreatable disease. Today, 15 disease-modifying treatments are approved for MS, and Cohen said he has 鈥渂een involved in some way or another鈥� with the development of each of them.

Cohen has worked with ACTRIMS since its founding in 1995. The group is made up of clinicians and researchers across North America who focus on sharing knowledge in hopes of improving MS treatment options and providing training to early-career physicians and scientists. It has counterparts in other areas of the world, including the European Committee for Treatment and Research in Multiple Sclerosis (ECTRIMS).

During his residency, which began in 1981, Cohen was drawn to neuroscience and immunology, both fields than in their infancies and both notoriously complex. 鈥淢S is a field where those two topics intersect,鈥� he told Multiple Sclerosis News Today.

He came to the Mellen Center in 1994, just one year after the first disease-modifying treatment, Betaseron (interferon beta 1b, marketed by Bayer HealthCare), was approved for MS. He treats a large population of MS patients there and was named director of its Experimental Therapeutics Program in 2014. He designs and runs clinical trials for MS and related diseases, while training other specialists in the skills necessary to run MS trials.

As of July 1, 2019 Benjamin M. Segal, MD, assumed the roles of chair of the Department of Neurology and Director of the Neurological Research Institute at The Ohio State University College of Medicine. He is also co-director of The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center鈥檚 Neurological Institute. He earned his medical degree Brown University, completed his internship in medicine at University of Chicago and conducted his residency in neurology at New York Hospital/Weill Medical College of Cornell University.

Dr. Segal began his academic career at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), where he conducted innovative research in multiple sclerosis and immunology. In 2000, he was recruited to the Department of Neurology at the University of Rochester. That year he was awarded the prestigious Harry Weaver Neuroscience Scholar award by the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. The University of Michigan鈥攈ome to one of our nation鈥檚 top neurology programs鈥攔ecruited Dr. Segal to lead its Division of Multiple Sclerosis in 2007. Under Dr. Segal鈥檚 leadership, the University of Michigan became a national referral center for the treatment of patients with multiple sclerosis. The MS clinic population expanded in size from approximately 400 to 4,000 patients during his tenure.

Dr. Segal is internationally recognized for his work in multiple sclerosis (MS) and neuroimmunology. With annual NIH funding for his ongoing research programs in excess of 1.3 million dollars, his discoveries have contributed to the basic understanding of the pathogenesis of multiple sclerosis (MS) and similar diseases. He has shown that the type of inflammation that causes damage to the nervous system during MS can vary among individuals, suggesting that pharmaceutical regimens must be personalized for each patient. Dr. Segal has directed a number of industry- and government-sponsored clinical trials and biomarker studies that focus on individuals with relapsing and progressive forms of the disease. More recently, his laboratory is investigating how destructive immune responses in the nervous system can be skewed and redirected to initiate repair. He publishes in high impact academic journals, including the Journal of Clinical Investigation,Annals of Neurology, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, and Lancet Neurology.

Dr. Segal has received innumerable awards, lectured nationally and internationally and served on multiple NIH study sections, including co-chairing the major review panel in his field. He holds several patents and is a member of every major organization in neurology. Dr. Segal served as Program Chair for the annual meeting of the Americas Committee for Treatment and Research in Multiple Sclerosis (ACTRIMS) between 2016 and 2018, and he currently serves as a Director at ACTRIMS. Through ACTRIMS, he has developed an annual national symposium to educate neurology residents and young research investigators about the diagnosis, pathogenesis, and treatment of MS. Dr. Segal was inducted into the University of Michigan League of Research Excellence in 2014. He was a Senior Scholar of the A. Alfred Taubman Medical Research Institute and has been named among the Best Doctors in America for the past eight years.

I received a B.S. degree from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, M.S. from Springfield College (MA), and a doctorate from the University of South Carolina at Columbia  all  in  the  area  of  kinesiology/exercise  science.  I  also  completed  a  post-doctoral  fellowship  at  the  Minneapolis  Medical  Research  Foundation  in  the  area  of neuroimmunology.  I am currently a Professor of Kinesiology and Community Health with  additional  appointments  in  the  Division  of  Nutritional  Sciences  and the Carle-Illinois  College of  Medicine  at  the  University  of  Illinois  at  Urbana/Champaign. My expertise are in exercise physiology, and more specifically the effects of exercise on the immune system, the gut microbiome, and aging. I have mentored 30 graduate students, 2 post-doctoral fellows, and have received campus recognition for guiding undergraduate research. I have authored over 130 peer-reviewed scientific journal articles  and  have  been  a  Principal or  Co-Investigator  on >$22  million of  funded federal and industry sponsored research.