Vassigh has built a nationally recognized body of research work focused on improving building technology and sustainable building design education by developing alternative teaching pedagogies. She is a recipient of two major federal grants for "A Comprehensive Approach to Teaching Structures" and "Building Literacy: the Integration of Building Technology and Design in Architectural Education." Both projects developed interactive learning environments using state of the art computing technology. She is the author of Interactive Structures: Visualizing Structural Behavior (2005). She received a Master of Architecture, a Master in Urban Planning and a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from University at Buffalo, the State University of New York.