Her father was a physics professor, from whom she learned math, and her mother was an artist who sold portrait paintings.
After graduation she work at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution as a lab technician for a summer.
She was diagnosed with dyslexia in her mid-forties, and has talked about how it shaped the way she sees the world, and how it influenced her love for fluid mechanics and biology.
Scientific techniques utilized in Koehl's laboratory range from fluid and solid mechanics to ecological quadrat sampling.
She has studied how marine larvae swim and feed in turbulent flows,[6] and how organisms like kelp, seagrass and coral use currents and waves.