Akassoglou performed her graduate studies at the University of Athens in Greece and the University of Vienna in Austria, where she developed a novel transgenic animal model for multiple sclerosis. As a recipient of the Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP) postdoctoral fellowship, Akassoglou performed her postdoctoral studies at SUNY at Stony Brook and the Rockefeller University. She continued her research at New York University with support from the Wadsworth Foundation and the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.