Lydia-Marie Joubert is the Director of Operations at the Stanford-SLAC Cryo-Electron Tomography Center (SCSC) at Stanford University, USA, where she leads operations, training, and technology development in cryo-electron tomography and advanced cryogenic electron microscopy. She is also Professor Extraordinary in Microbiology at Stellenbosch University, South Africa.
She obtained her BSc in Mathematics and Botany (Honours BSc) and MSc in Botany from Stellenbosch University, followed by a PhD jointly supervised by the University of Pretoria, South Africa, and Indiana University, Bloomington, USA. During her MSc studies, she completed an international research internship in Plant Genetics at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel. Later in her career, she also obtained an MPhil in Higher Education.
Joubert is an internationally recognised expert in advanced electron microscopy and imaging technologies. Her research focuses on developing and applying cutting-edge microscopy approaches to answer fundamental biological questions across plant, microbial, and biomedical sciences. Her current work advances cryo-electron tomography, cryo-focused ion beam scanning electron microscopy, correlative light and electron microscopy, and three-dimensional imaging workflows that enable visualisation of biological structures at subnanometer resolution.
Over a career spanning South Africa, Israel, and the United States, Joubert has contributed to research in plant development, environmental microbiology, biomaterials, bioenergy, and cell biology in health and disease. She is widely recognised for excellence in scientific visualisation, with numerous international awards for microscopy imaging, and her electron micrographs have frequently appeared on the covers of leading scientific journals.
