 He is the founding director of the Center for Nutrition, Learning, and Memory (CNLM), a partnership of the University of Illinois and Abbott Laboratories as of 2011.He is also the founding director of the Interdisciplinary Health Sciences Initiative (IHSI) at the University of Illinois, formed 2014.Cohen is known for his work on memory, amnesia, and learning, particularly his theories of 
multiple memory systems and the role of the hippocampus in relational memory.