Professor Orlowska has a distinguished research record in the information technology area of database systems. She is a pioneer in the theoretical foundations of information storage and retrieval systems with incomplete information. Her later work has concentrated on data management issues such as advanced transaction processing, semantic query optimisation and relational database design. More recently, her study on distributed database foundations, i.e., data fragmentation and allocation to a network of computers and heterogeneous database interoperability has made a significant impact with international recognition.