Pate-Cornell is an expert in engineering risk analysis and management and, more generally, the use of Bayesian probability to process incomplete information.

Her research and that of her Engineering Risk Research Group have focused on the inclusion of technical and management factors in probabilistic risk analysis models with applications to the NASA shuttle tiles, offshore oil platforms and medical systems.

Pate-Cornell, born in Dakar, Senegal, earned her Bachelor's degree in mathematics and physics from Aix-Marseille University in 1968, and her Master's and Engineering degrees in applied mathematics and computer science from the Institut Polytechnique de Grenoble, (France, 1970;1971), a Master's degree in Operations Research from Stanford in 1972 and a Ph.D. in Engineering-Economic Systems, also from Stanford, in 1978.

In 1999, she was named Burt and Deedee McMurtry Professor in the Stanford School of Engineering.

She and the late Professor C. Allin Cornell have two children Philip (1981) and Ariane (1984).