Cornell Brooks is from Woodbridge, Virginia, and earned his BA in Psychology from Amherst College in 2019. As an undergraduate, Cornell joined the lab of Dr. Nadia Biassou at the NIH, conducting a collaborative project with the FDA to test the safety of high magnitude MRI scans. Prior to graduating college, he worked as a research assistant at Yale New Haven Hospital under the supervision of Dr. Imran Quraishi. While working with Dr. Quraishi, he reviewed over 3000 electrocorticograms to determine ideal seizure onset patterns for implanted responsive neurostimulation (RNS) devices to accurately detect and record seizures. After graduating college, Cornell spent two years as a research associate in the Department of cardiac surgery at Yale school of medicine under the mentorship of section chief Dr. Arnar Geirsson and lead research resident Dr. Makoto Mori. His research focused on tracking cardiac surgery patients postoperative recovery trajectories over the course of 1 month. He also authored a manuscript looking into how volume outcome effects in cardiac surgery manifest across different case types on a center level in the state of New York.

Now a rising M2 at the University of Illinois Chicago, Cornell is eager to spend the summer conducting research investigating patient perception of risk when considering surgery and learning more about robotic mitral valve repairs with Dr. Geirsson at Yale School of medicine.