[1][2] She completed her undergraduate thesis under the mentorship of Dr. Mark Wightman where she studied the effects of cannabinoid modulation on dopaminergic signalling in the nucleus accumbens of rats.

[3] Using fast-scan cyclic voltammetry, she helped discover that cannabinoid agonists lead to an increased frequency of extracellular dopamine transients in the nucleus accumbens.

[4] At UCLA, Wassum worked under the mentorship of Dr. Bernard Balleine and Dr. Nigel Maidment studying the role of endogenous opioids in reward learning.

[10][11] The Wassum Lab studies the neural circuits underlying reward learning and associated motivated behaviors and decision making.

[4] One of her current and longer lasting projects is dissecting the reciprocal cortical-amygdala circuit that mediates reward learning and memory retrieval to make informed future decisions.