Abriola is dean of the School of Engineering at Tufts University, where she holds joint appointments in the departments of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Chemical and Biological Engineering. Prior to joining Tufts, she was a faculty member in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Michigan, where she directed the Environmental and Water Resources Engineering Program, and was named the Horace Williams King Collegiate Professor of Environmental Engineering. Abriola is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS) and the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). She received her B.S. from Drexel University, and her M.S. and Ph.D. from Princeton University, all in civil engineering.

An author of more than 140 refereed publications, she has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Association for Women Geoscientist's Outstanding Educator Award (1996), the National Ground Water Association's Distinguished Darcy Lectureship (1996), designation as an ISI Web of Science Highly Cited Author in Ecology/Environment (2002), the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program Project of the Year Award in Remediation (2006, 2012), and Drexel University’s Engineering Leader of the Year Award (2013).

Her many professional activities have included service on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Science Advisory Board, the National Research Council (NRC) Water Science and Technology Board, and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Natural and Accelerated Bioremediation Research Advisory Committee. She recently served as an elected member of the NAE Governing Council and as a member of the National Science Foundation Engineering Directorate Advisory Committee. She currently serves on the National Academies Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy and the NRC Committee for the Division on Engineering and Physical Sciences.