Cynthia E. Coburn is professor at the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University. 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). 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.