At Colorado, she directs a research project titled "Empowering the Public with Information during Crisis", and is co-director of the Center for Software & Society.
[2] Palen's research involves searching for "ways in which we can communicate uncertainty and probability and risk to the public" and translating that information into recommendations on how disaster victims should respond.
[5] Her tips for using social media in emergency situations include being specific about locations and conditions, avoiding trying to remain emotionless and unaffected, and helping to gather and check information when not directly affected.
After working for two years for Boeing, she returned to graduate study at the University of California, Irvine, in what at that time was the Department of Information and Computer Science, earning a master's degree in 1995 and a Ph.D. in 1998.
[1] Palen came to the University of Colorado Boulder as an assistant research professor in 1998, and moved to the regular-rank faculty there in 2004.