Cynthia E. Coburn is professor at the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University in Chicago. She specializes in policy implementation, the relationship between research and practice, data use, and scale up of innovation.

She has studied research use in schools and districts since 2002, including co-directing a six-year cross-case study of innovative approaches that reconfigured the relationship between research and practice for educational improvement (with Mary Kay Stein) and a study of research-practice partnerships in three urban districts (with William Penuel).

She recently received five years of funding from the US Institute for Education Sciences as co-Principal Investigator of The National Center for Research in Policy and Practice. Coburn has received numerous awards for her scholarship, including the Early Career Award from the American Educational Research Association in recognition of her achievements in the first decade of her career. Coburn has a BA in philosophy from Oberlin College, and a MA in Sociology and a PhD in Education from Stanford University.