Dr. Yolanda Vasquez-Salgado is an Associate Professor of Psychology at California State University, Northridge (CSUN). She earned her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology, with a minor in Culture, Brain and Development, from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Her program of research utilizes a variety of methodological techniques (qualitative, survey, experiment, assessment of biological and clinical markers of health) to investigate the role of cultural mismatch in historically marginalized students’ health and academic outcomes during the transition to college.

Dr. Vasquez-Salgado’s research is currently being funded by an R16 SuRE First Award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and has received previous support from sources such as, the Ford Foundation, and the American Psychological Association. She has received numerous honors throughout her career, including, a High Impact Innovation Award for saliva collection protocols that she developed during the COVID-19 pandemic; these protocols subsequently informed campus-wide biospecimen research policies at her institution.

At a broader scale, Dr. Vasquez-Salgado’s research findings are actively shaping interventions at the community college and university levels – through courses and programs – designed to reduce cultural mismatch and promote health and educational equity for historically marginalized students pursuing careers in STEMM. As a mentor to dozens of undergraduate and graduate students, she draws on her experiences as a first-generation college student and daughter of immigrant parents to guide her mentees in navigating the hidden curriculum of higher education. Training, mentoring, and inspiring the next generation of scientists is her life purpose, and she is passionately committed to this work.