[3] Upon receiving her Ph.D. from the University of California, Irvine, Grinter worked at Bell Labs in Naperville, Illinois as a Technical Staff Member from 1996 to 2000.
At PARC, Grinter supervised a study of iTunes use in the workplace[4] whose results were reported in The Washington Post,[5] the San Francisco Chronicle,[6] and other major news outlets.
[7] In 2004, Grinter transitioned from industrial to academic research and joined the faculty of the College of Computing at Georgia Tech as an associate professor.
Grinter is a proponent of qualitative and empirical research methods, often conducting interviews and ethnographic studies to understand intersections between humans and technologies.
[15] One of Grinter's best-known publications, "Instant Messaging in Teen Life",[16] coauthored with Leysia Palen, was reported as one of the 15 most-downloaded papers on the ACM Digital Library for the year of 2006.