Panorska's research interests include studying extreme events in the stochastic processes used to model weather, water, and biology.^[2] She has also studied the effects of weather conditions on baseball performance, concluding that temperature has a larger effect than wind and humidity.^[3]

Panorska studied mathematics at the University of Warsaw, completing a degree in 1986. After earning a master's degree in statistics at the University of Texas at El Paso in 1988, she returned to mathematics for her doctoral studies, completing a Ph.D. at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1992.^[4] Her dissertation, Generalized Convolutions, was supervised by Svetlozar Rachev.^[5]

She became an assistant professor of mathematics at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in 1992, but left academia in 1997 to work as a biostatistician for BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee. After visiting the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1999–2000, she took a research faculty position in 2000 at the Desert Research Institute, associated with the University of Nevada, Reno. In 2002 she became a regular faculty member in mathematics and statistics at the university, and in 2011 she was promoted to full professor.^[4]

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