[1] She was an undergraduate student in biology at Cornell University, and started working as an assistant researcher in Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in 1984.
Ashijan completed her doctoral studies at the University of Rhode Island,[2] where she investigated the impact of Gulf Stream on the biogeography of zooplankton.
She spent two years at Brookhaven before moving to the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science.
Ashijan started her independent academic career at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, working at the Surface Heat Budget of the Arctic Ocean (SHEBA) ice camp based in the Beaufort Sea.
[5] The GLOBEC project[6] collects samples of zooplankton using a Multiple Opening Closing Net and Environmental Sensing System (MOCNESS), and uses a Video Plankton Recorder to monitor the distribution of krill under the ice.