In Memoriam
Avis Cohen
Professor Emerita
Department of Biology
Prof. Emerita Avis Cohen, who came to our Department from Cornell University in 1990, died recently: the below remembrance is from Prof. Daphne Soares.
In the 1990s, along with Bill Hodos and Arthur Popper, Avis saw that a training program in Neuroscience was needed on campus. A proposal for a Neuroscience and Cognitive Science (NACS) Program was submitted and the Maryland Higher Education Commission (MHEC) approved NACS as a Ph.D. program in 1996. Avis served as inaugural NACS director from 1996-1998.
Avis became ill in the winter of 2012, and in my first semester at UMD, I took over teaching the “Diseases of the Nervous System” class that she introduced at UMD. It was and remains a popular and valuable class, and was taught by Quentin Gaudry after me and now by Chan Lin. I was fortunate to have Avis as a mentor when I first began teaching here.