Leysia Palen is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Colorado, Boulder and a faculty fellow with the Institute for the Alliance of Technology, Learning and Society (ATLAS) and the Institute of Cognitive Science (ICS). She is the Director of the connectivIT Lab and principal investigator on the NSF Funded Project EPIC. Her training and interests are socio-technical, with a focus on ethnographic studies of coordination and practice that inform technology design, implementation, and policy.
Prior to her appointment at Colorado, she completed her PhD at the University of California, Irvine in Information and Computer Science and her undergraduate education in Cognitive Science at the University of California, San Diego. Professor Palen was awarded a 2006 National Science Federation Early CAREER Grant to study information dissemination in disaster events. In 2009, Palen and her colleagues were awarded $2.8M from the National Science Foundation for Project EPIC--"Empowering the Public with Information in Crisis." In 2005-2006, Professor Palen was a visiting professor at the University of Aarhus, Denmark in the Center for Interactive Spaces and the Center for Pervasive Healthcare.