Mutzel earned a diploma in 1990 from the University of Augsburg, in mathematics with computer science. She then earned a doctorate in computer science from the University of Cologne in 1994 under the supervision of Michael Jünger,^[2][3] and her habilitation in 1999 from the Max Planck Institute for Informatics. She held a professorship at the Vienna University of Technology beginning in 1999, moving to the Technical University of Dortmund in 2004 and then to the University of Bonn in 2019.^[4]

In graph drawing, Mutzel has contributed in work on planarization,^[5] crossing minimization in layered graph drawing,^[6] and SPQR trees,^[7] and co-edited a book on graph drawing.^[8] She was both the program chair and organizational chair of the 9th International Symposium on Graph Drawing, in Vienna in 2001.^[9]

Mutzel's other contributions include works on the Ising model,^[10] steganography,^[11] and Steiner trees.^[12] In 2012, she was program committee co-chair of the Meeting on Algorithm Engineering and Experiments (ALENEX).^[13]

• De Simone, C.; Diehl, M.; Jünger, M.; Mutzel, P.; Reinelt, G.; Rinaldi, G. (July 1995), "Exact ground states of Ising spin glasses: New experimental results with a branch-and-cut algorithm", Journal of Statistical Physics, 80 (1–2): 487–496, Bibcode:1995JSP....80..487D, CiteSeerX 10.1.1.30.4226, doi:10.1007/BF02178370, S2CID 9364389.
• Jünger, M.; Mutzel, P. (1996), "Maximum planar subgraphs and nice embeddings: practical layout tools", Algorithmica, 16 (1): 33–59, CiteSeerX 10.1.1.41.3987, doi:10.1007/s004539900036, MR 1394493.
• Jünger, Michael; Mutzel, Petra (1997), "2-layer straightline crossing minimization: performance of exact and heuristic algorithms", Journal of Graph Algorithms and Applications, 1 (1): 1–25, CiteSeerX 10.1.1.41.9180, doi:10.7155/jgaa.00001, MR 1478845, S2CID 782954.
• Gutwenger, Carsten; Mutzel, Petra (2001), "A linear time implementation of SPQR-trees", Graph Drawing: 8th International Symposium, GD 2000 Colonial Williamsburg, VA, USA, September 20–23, 2000, Proceedings, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 1984, Berlin: Springer-Verlag, pp. 77–90, doi:10.1007/3-540-44541-2_8, ISBN 978-3-540-41554-1.
• Jünger, Michael; Mutzel, Petra, eds. (2004), Graph Drawing Software, Mathematics and Visualization, Berlin: Springer-Verlag, doi:10.1007/978-3-642-18638-7, ISBN 978-3-540-00881-1, MR 2159308.
• Hetzl, Stefan; Mutzel, Petra (2005), "A graph–theoretic approach to steganography", Communications and Multimedia Security: 9th IFIP TC-6 TC-11 International Conference, CMS 2005, Salzburg, Austria, September 19 – 21, 2005, Proceedings, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 3677, Berlin: Springer-Verlag, pp. 119–128, doi:10.1007/11552055_12, ISBN 978-3-540-28791-9.
• Ljubić, Ivana; Weiskircher, René; Pferschy, Ulrich; Klau, Gunnar W.; Mutzel, Petra; Fischetti, Matteo (2006), "An algorithmic framework for the exact solution of the prize-collecting Steiner tree problem", Mathematical Programming, 105 (2–3, Ser. B): 427–449, CiteSeerX 10.1.1.219.5353, doi:10.1007/s10107-005-0660-x, MR 2190829, S2CID 10535226.