Dr. Cozzarelli currently works at the US Agency for International Development, the US Government Agency that provides development and humanitarian assistance to other nations. She works in the Bureau for Europe and Eurasia (E&E), which operates in countries of South-eastern Europe (especially the Balkans) and the former Soviet Union. She provides technical assistance on issues related to child welfare (especially alternatives to institutionalizing children), trafficking in persons, and gender. Dr. Cozzarelli also manages the research portfolio for her Team, designing research, supervising consultants, and editing final products related to social sector issues in E&E. She frequently conducts evaluations of USAID programs and assists in new program design for USAID Missions in the field.

As an academic, Dr. Cozzarelli conducted research on a wide variety of topics, including attachment styles, cultural estrangement, coping with stressful life events, and attitudes toward poor people. In her research on attachment styles, she examined, among other things, the stability of adult attachment styles, how attachment styles impact coping with stressors, and whether individuals have both global and person-specific attachment styles. Her research on cultural estrangement focuses on the characteristics of people who feel estranged and the psychological impact of this form of alienation.

Dr. Cozzarelli has also investigated the personal and situational factors that affect how individuals cope with stressful life events. Much of this research has been devoted to exploring factors that influence women's post-abortion adjustment, such as religiosity, self-esteem, social support, and exposure to anti-abortion picketing.

One last area of Dr. Cozzarelli's research focuses on attitudes toward poor people. She has examined the content and affective tone of Americans' attitudes toward poor people, and the attributions that middle-class Americans make for poverty in men and women.