She received her Diploma in Biology from University of Heidelberg (Germany) in 1998 with highest distinction, then her PhD (with university-wide "best thesis" distinction) in Biology from the same institution in 2001. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg during the period 2002-2005, and is currently a Bauer Fellow in the Harvard University Center for Systems Biology. Dr. Ribbeck holds expertise in biological transport barriers (including the nuclear pore and the epithelial mucosal matrices), and is pursuing application of basic mechanistic understanding of these barriers to problems such as viral infection and bacterial colonization in diseases such as AIDS and cystic fibrosis.