Elaine Cohen is an American researcher in geometric modeling and computer graphics, known for her pioneering research on B-splines.^[1] She is a professor in the school of computing at the University of Utah.^[2]

Cohen graduated from Vassar College in 1968, with a bachelor's degree in mathematics. She went to Syracuse University for graduate study in mathematics, earning a master's degree in 1970 and completing her doctorate in 1974.^[3] Her dissertation, On the Degree of Approximation of a Function by Partial Sums of its Fourier Series, concerned approximation theory, and was supervised by Daniel Waterman.^[4]

At the University of Utah, Cohen became the first woman to gain tenure at the School of Engineering.^[5]

With Richard F. Riesenfeld and Gershon Elber, Cohen is the author of the book Geometric Modeling with Splines: An Introduction (AK Peters, 2001).^[6]

She has also contributed to the development of the Utah teapot, improving it from a two-dimensional surface with no thickness to a bona-fide three-dimensional object.^[7]

In 2005, the YWCA of Salt Lake City gave Cohen their Outstanding Achievement Award.^[5] In 2009, Cohen and Riesenfeld were awarded the Pierre Bézier Award of the Solid Modeling Association for their work on B-splines in computer aided geometric design.^[1]