The American Journal of Hypertension recently announced the two recipients of its 2026 John H. Laragh Research Award. The annual honor recognizes outstanding investigators in the field of hypertension who are under 45 years of age. Two awards are presented for achievements in basic science and clinical science, respectively.
Jordana B. Cohen, associate professor of medicine and epidemiology and director of epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania, received the John H. Laragh Research Award in Clinical Science. Using advanced pharmacoepidemiologic methods and randomized trials, she focuses her research on better understanding physiology-driven pharmacologic effects of antihypertensive medicine in complex and high-risk disease states. Dr. Cohen also studies accuracy and utility of out-of-office blood pressure measurement, and disparities in access to care and long-term cardiovascular outcomes in high-risk patients with hypertension and chronic kidney disease. She has served in committee leadership roles with the American Medical Association and the American Heart Association, and she was on the guideline writing committee for the 2025 AHA/ACC Guideline for the Prevention, Detection, Evaluation and Management of High Blood Pressure in Adults.
A graduate of the College of New Jersey, Dr. Cohen holds a medical degree from Rutgers University in New Jersey and a master’s degree in clinical epidemiology from the University of Pennsylvania. She completed an internal medicine residency at Boston University Medical Center and a nephrology fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania.
Daria V. Ilatovskaya, associate professor of physiology at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University, received the John H. Laragh Research Award in Basic Science. In her research, Dr. Ilatovskaya focuses on mechanisms of renal blood pressure regulation, with particular emphasis on mitochondrial bioenergetics and sex-specific aspects of renal metabolism. Through a combination of in vivo, ex vivo, and in vitro approaches, she and her lab study kidney function across molecular, cellular, and whole-organism scales. Dr. Ilatovskaya holds leadership roles with the American Heart Association and the American Physiological Society.
Dr. Ilatovskaya received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in physics from Saint Petersburg State University in Russia and her Ph.D. in biological and biomedical sciences from the Russian Academy of Sciences.