Vernon graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1975 with a Bachelor of Surgery in chemistry, and earned her Doctor of Philosophy in computer science from University of California, Los Angeles in 1983 under the supervision of Gerald Estrin.
Her research concerns high-performance computer architecture and streaming media. She was named a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery in 1996 "for fundamental contributions to performance analysis of parallel computer architectures and for leadership in the computing research community.".
