Luisa Cochella grew up in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She obtained her Licenciatura (B.S.-Masters equivalent) in Biology from the Universidad de Buenos Aires and her PhD from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where she conducted her thesis work in the lab of Dr. Rachel Green. For her postdoc, Luisa moved from studying fundamental aspects of protein synthesis, to using the worm C. elegans as a genetic system to study cell differentiation and development in the lab of Dr. Oliver Hobert at Columbia University in New York. Combining these two diverse trainings, Luisa started her independent group at the IMP in Vienna, Austria in 2013, with the goal to understand the basic gene regulatory mechanisms that drive the development of a multicellular organism. In 2021 the Cochella lab moved to Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics. A large part of the Cochella lab focuses on the functions of microRNAs in animal development.

Luisa has been awarded an ERC Starting Grant, an NSF Career Award, she was an EMBO Young Investigator and was awarded the Elisa Izaurralde Award from the RNA Society in 2022.