In 2004, Joanne was awarded an MSci degree in Physics from Imperial College in London. This degree included a year spent at the Universitat de València, Spain, where she carried out her final thesis on the remote sensing of evapotranspiration from agricultural regions threatened by desertification in Castilla-La Mancha.

Since 2004, she has been carrying out her DPhil research at the University of Oxford, UK, developing algorithms for the retrieval of CO and NO_x from MIPAS-ENVISAT, investigating atmospheric chemistry involving NO_y and ozone, and performing validation against other instruments. During her DPhil, she has spent time at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía in Granada, Spain, where she worked on accounting for non-LTE (non local thermodynamic equilibrium) radiative transfer in the retrieval of CO. She has also worked as a tutor for undergraduates in atmospheric physics and has recently been involved in validation activities for ESA.