Tabassum-Abbasi has received her BTech, MTech, and PhD degrees in instrumentation and control engineering, environmental engineering, and environmental technology, respectively - all from Pondicherry University. She too has been a class topper throughout, receiving gold medals. She has been working as Assistant Professor at the University of Petroleum & Energy Studies, Dehradun since January 2019, attaining senior grade (Level 2) in 2022, and selection grade (Level 3) recently. She has spent an year (2023- 24) in post-doctoral research at the University of Edinburgh as a British Council Women in Science Fellow. Besides research papers on bioprocess engineering and sustainability in highly cited journals, she has received three patents, and has registered another two.