Faye-Marie Vassel

Faye-Marie Vassel is a native of the Bronx, NY and received her B.S. from Stony Brook University where she studied biochemistry and Russian studies. Following her undergraduate studies at Stony Brook Faye-Marie went on to Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she received her Ph.D. in biology. Faye-Marie’s doctoral research was focused on enhancing the field’s understanding of how DNA-damage response mechanisms can modulate chemotherapeutic resistance in drug-resistant lung cancer.

In Fall 2021, upon completion of a AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellowship at the National Science Foundation, Faye-Marie joined HAI and the research groups of Dr. Bryan Brown (Graduate School of Education) and Dr. Hideo Mabuchi (Applied Physics) as a STEM Education, Equity, and Inclusion Postdoctoral Fellow. During her time as a fellow, Faye-Marie’s research will be focused on elucidating key factors that may inhibit students from groups historically marginalized in STEM from successfully persisting in the computational sciences. 

In the long term, Faye-Marie aims to pursue tenure-track faculty positions where she can develop an interdisciplinary research program that will enable her to employ mixed-methodological approaches to identify and better understand how social and structural determinants impact access to quality and equitable STEM educational opportunities. By conducting research of this nature, Faye-Marie hopes to help reduce the educational disparities still present in the academic trajectories of many STEM learners.