Fussell graduated from
Tufts University in 1981, with a bachelor's degree in
psychology and
sociology. She went to
Columbia University for graduate study in
social and cognitive psychology, earning a master's degree there in 1983 and completing her Ph.D. in 1990. Her dissertation, ''The Coordination of Knowledge in Communication: People's Assumptions about Others' Knowledge and Their Effects on Referential Communication'', was supervised by Robert M. Krauss. While doing her graduate studies, Fussell also worked at
Bell Labs from 1987 to 1988. After postdoctoral research at
Princeton University, she became an assistant professor at
Mississippi State University in 1993, but returned to industry as a researcher at
Bell Communications Research in 1995. She worked as a scientist and later a research professor at
Carnegie Mellon University from 1997 to 2008, when she moved to Cornell. She has also been a program director at the
National Science Foundation from 2010 to 2012, and director of graduate studies in communication at Cornell since 2013. ==Recognition==