Dr. Palmer has served as director and chief medical officer of AcelRx since she co-founded the company in July 2005.

Dr. Palmer has dedicated her career to researching and treating pain, first as an anesthesiologist at UCSF and in her current role as chief medical officer and a member of the board of directors of AcelRx, a company she co-founded in July 2005.

Dr. Palmer gained extensive experience in the treatment of pain during her tenure as the director of the UCSF Pain Center for Advanced Research and Education (PainCARE) from 2005 to 2009, during which time the American Pain Society named the UCSF Pain Management Center and PainCARE jointly as one of only six centers of excellence nationwide. Prior to PainCARE, from 1999 to 2005, she was medical director of the UCSF Pain Management Center, which uses a comprehensive and multidisciplinary approach to treat patients with various stages and types of complex acute and chronic pain. From 1996 to 1999, Dr. Palmer worked as a faculty member at UCSF, where she conducted research on basic science mechanisms of pain transmission in her NIH-funded laboratory.

In 1994 she co-founded Omeros Corporation, a biopharmaceutical company developing small-molecule and protein therapeutics aimed at improving pain management and clinical outcomes of patients undergoing a wide range of surgical and medical procedures. Dr. Palmer remains a consultant to Omeros.

Dr. Palmer received a medical degree and a doctorate in neuroscience at Stanford University, and continued on to the University of California, San Francisco for her anesthesia residency. She has an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering..

Dr. Palmer is Board certified in anesthesiology and pain medicine by the American Board of Anesthesiology.