She is a professor at the University of California, Davis, jointly affiliated with the departments of mathematics and of microbiology and molecular genetics.

[2] Her dissertation was entitled Tangle Analysis of Site-specific Recombination: Gin and Xer Systems and her advisor was De Witt Sumners.

[5] In 2011, Vázquez received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award to research topological mechanisms of DNA unlinking.

[6] In 2012, she was the first San Francisco State University faculty member to receive the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers.

[8] In 2016, she was chosen for the Blackwell-Tapia prize, which is awarded every other year to a mathematician who has made significant research contributions in their field, and who has worked to address the problem of under-representation of minority groups in mathematics.