As the founding director of URL: Urban Research Lab, her research explores the intersection between emerging technologies and the built environment. She was a predoctoral researcher at the MIT media lab, and a participant in University of California Berkeley Center for New Media directed by Ken Goldberg. Tierney is the author of "Public Space/ New Publics: Social Media's Connected Culture" (forthcoming 2012), “Abstract Space: Beneath the Media Surface” (Routledge 2007) and co-editor of “Network Practice: New Strategies for Architecture + Design” (Princeton 2007).