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

Faye-Marie is currently a 2019-2021 AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow (STP) at the National Science Foundation (NSF). During her time as AAAS STP fellow at the NSF Faye-Marie has had the opportunity to help her host office, in the Division on Research and Learning, better understand the evolving nature of the STEM education research funding landscape. Faye-Marie’s time as a AAAS fellow has been incredibly rewarding and given her greater insight into critical issues of equity, access, and inclusion of great importance to the STEM education research community. In Fall 2021 Faye-Marie will start a STEM Equity and Inclusion research fellowship at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education. Long term, Faye-Marie aims to pursue academic tenure-track faculty positions where she can develop a 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.