Radhia Cousot was born on 6 August 1947, in Sakiet Sidi Youssef in Tunisia, where she survived the massacre of the children in her school on February 8, 1958.

Supported by a UNESCO fellowship (1972–1975), she obtained a master's degree in Computer Science (Diplôme d'études approfondies (DEA)) at the Joseph Fourier University of Grenoble in 1972.

Together with her husband Patrick, Radhia Cousot is the originator of abstract interpretation,[2][3] an influential technique in formal methods.

In her thesis, Radhia Cousot advanced the semantics, proof, and static analysis methods for concurrent and parallel programs.

[4] Radhia Cousot is at the origin of the contacts with Airbus in January 1999 that led to the development of Astrée run-time error analyzer from 2001 onwards, a tool for sound static program analysis of embedded control/command software developed at the École Normale Supérieure[5] and now distributed by AbsInt GmbH,[6] a German software company specialized on static analysis.