When Daphne Soares was an undergraduate at the University of Maryland in the early 1990s, she did not know she could become a scientist or professor.

Then Avis Cohen invited her to work in her laboratory.

Cohen taught Soares how to perform dissections and study data. More importantly, she taught her how to think, defend her ideas and admit when she was wrong without feeling ashamed.

“She changed my life,” said Soares, now an associate professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and Rutgers University. “Before I met her, I didn’t realize that there were these life options, career options, in terms of: What is a young woman? What can I do with my life?”

Cohen, a pioneering neuroscientist and University of Maryland professor who worked to improve opportunities for women in science, died on June 6 at home in Silver Spring after a long illness. She was 84.

Soares had never taken one of Cohen’s classes. She was unsure about her future when Cohen invited her into a lab that included graduate researchers, a postdoctoral mathematician and a technician. Soares was the only undergraduate.

“She taught me how to think,” Soares said.

Cohen also showed her how to be confident without believing she was always right. A failed idea was not something to be embarrassed about. It was part of learning.

“It’s actually OK,” Soares recalled learning from her. “That was not right, but that’s fine. We can keep going.”

Avis was born in 1941 in Chicago to Harry and Ethel Schulner. She grew up when girls were not always encouraged to excel in school. In high school, someone warned her that if she earned all A’s, no one would want to marry her.

Marshall Cohen proved that prediction wrong. They married when she was 19 and continued their studies at the University of Michigan, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in 1964.

She later earned a doctorate from Cornell University. Her graduate adviser, neuroscientist Eric Lenneberg, helped develop her interest in the nervous system. He died before she completed her degree, leaving Cohen to finish her dissertation during a difficult time.

After postdoctoral research at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, she returned to Cornell. She spent about 10 years there as a research associate and ran a laboratory supported by grants.

Her son, Philip Cohen, said she “really scrapped” to build a career during the 1980s. Science was dominated by men, and women of her generation had few senior female scientists to guide them.

Cohen faced sexism and a lack of respect, her son said. She learned when to challenge someone, when to work around an obstacle and when to avoid a person blocking her progress.

“She was an adventurer in that sense,” he said. “It was a personal journey that was kind of uncharted.”

She continued because she believed in basic science and wanted to understand how the natural world worked.

Much of her research involved lampreys, eel-like animals with simple nervous systems. Her work helped show that movement does not come only from the brain. The spinal cord can also produce signals that tell muscles how to move.

Cohen combined laboratory research with mathematics and later robotics. Near the end of her career, she worked with scientists on a small robot with mechanical legs that could adjust their movements with limited direction from a central control system.

“She loved to see how the walk changed when the legs had to sort of figure out what to do,” Philip Cohen said. “It really seemed to open up a world of possibility.”

In 1990, the University of Maryland offered Cohen a full professorship in biology. She and her husband moved from Ithaca, New York, to Greenbelt.

At Maryland, she helped create the Neuroscience and Cognitive Science Program, which connected biology, psychology, language, medicine and other subjects. Her son said creating the program may have been her proudest professional achievement.

Cohen also helped the university obtain support through the National Science Foundation’s ADVANCE initiative, which promotes women in academic science and engineering. The program gave younger women some of the support that had been missing when Cohen began her career.

As the head of a laboratory, Cohen also felt responsible for the researchers, technicians and students who depended on her grants for their jobs and careers.

Soares said Cohen’s influence reached far beyond science.

“She didn’t tell me,” Soares said. “She taught me by example how to be a person.”

Cohen had a busy mind and did not want to be a stay-at-home parent, but family remained important to her. She cooked for holiday gatherings, traveled with her family and encouraged her children to become independent. Her son said she trusted him to manage school, friendships and daily life without constant supervision.

She welcomed his two daughters, who were adopted from China, as full members of the family. She listened to them and tried to understand what was happening in their lives.

Cohen expressed her Jewish identity through family traditions, holiday celebrations, a form of keeping kosher and a love of learning and asking questions.

She also had close family ties to Israel and supported dialogue and peace between Israelis and Palestinians. She favored a two-state solution and later supported the New Israel Fund. Her son said she believed that all people deserved freedom and the right to make decisions about their own lives.

While living in Ithaca, the family attended services through the Cornell Hillel community. In Maryland, Cohen and her husband sometimes attended Shaare Tefila Congregation in Olney.

Cohen and her husband attended political demonstrations, visited Washington museums and enjoyed the National Arboretum and the cherry blossoms.

Friends and family remembered Cohen’s distinctive, infectious laugh. Her son said that when people heard it, they knew she was listening and fully involved in the conversation.

For Soares, Cohen’s legacy can be seen in the life and career she went on to build.

“Without having had that time, being in her lab or being with her, I would be a completely different human being,” she said.

Ellen Braunstein is a freelance obituary writer. She welcomes suggestions for individuals who had meaningful ties to the greater Washington Jewish community. Email csix@midatlanticmedia.com.