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Professor Leysia Palen was the founding chair of the Department of Information Science. She also maintains her appointment in computer science and is a faculty fellow with ATLAS and the Institute of Cognitive Science. Palen is a graduate of one of the earliest information studies-related programs, earning a PhD from the University of California, Irvine in information and computer science in 1998. She has been a faculty member at ¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ Boulder ever since, serving in computer science in the area of human-centered computing. She is delighted by the expansion of the discipline of information science at ¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ and sees enormous opportunity in serving the campus through the department’s faculty, students, courses and degree programs.

Palen is best known for her leadership in crisis informatics, for which she won the ACM Computer Human Interaction Social Impact award. In 2016, she was inducted into the ACM Computer Human Interaction Academy. With over 70 manuscripts on informatics and computing topics, Palen integrates a range of empirical approaches for examining socio-technical phenomena to explain interpersonal, organizational and institutional changes in a digitally-supported world. Palen’s research is funded by the NSF. She has worked at Xerox PARC; Boeing; Microsoft; the University of Aarhus, Denmark and the University of Agder, Norway.