Myra B. Cohen

Myra B. Cohen is a Professor and the Lanh and Oanh Nguyen Chair in Software Engineering within the Department of Computer Science at Iowa State University's College of Engineering. She previously served as a Susan J. Rosowski Professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and leads the LaVA-OPs Laboratory for Variability-Aware Assurance and Testing of Organic Programs.

Her research spans software testing of highly-configurable systems, search-based software engineering, combinatorial design applications, and synergies between software engineering and synthetic biology. She investigates assurance techniques for self-adaptive systems through bio-inspired algorithms and examines software testing representations of natural processes like chemical reaction networks.

Her 15 most recent publications demonstrate strong focus on cyber-physical systems (particularly drone safety), biological computing, and configuration-aware testing. These works reveal interdisciplinary trends combining software engineering with synthetic biology, emphasizing real-world applications in autonomous systems and computational biology.

• NSF CAREER Award
• AFOSR Young Investigator Award
• ACM Distinguished Scientist
• Best Student Paper Award at SPLC 2019
• ACM Distinguished Paper Award at ASE 2020
• Best Paper Award at GI@ICSE 2021

Professor Cohen advises PhD students Salil Purandare, Md Obaidul Kabir, and Michael Gerten, with research focusing on cyber-physical systems and biological software applications. She leads multiple significant projects including the DOE-funded Dependable, Explainable, Reusable, AI-Driven Computational Biology initiative and blockchain fault tolerance research. Her LaVA-OPs laboratory develops assurance techniques for highly-configurable and self-adaptive programs through bio-inspired algorithms.