Joy Birkelbach studied pharmacy at the University of Greifswald. In her diploma thesis, Joy investigated the secondary metabolism of a shipworm symbiont, developed cultivation strategies and RT-qPCR protocols at the Institute of Pharmaceutical Biotechnology, University of Greifswald. In 2018, she obtained her diploma degree as well as her license to practice pharmacy. During her PhD studies, Joy worked with Myxobacteria and other gliding bacteria applying OSMAC-style cultivation approaches to trigger secondary metabolite production. To identify new natural products, she used comprehensive statistical analysis like MetaboScape and MZmine. Thus, she isolated and purified natural products with different chemical scaffolds using chromatographic methods like column and flash chromatography and HPLC. In order to characterise chemical, physical and structural properties, she applied spectrometric as well as spectroscopic methods, like MS and MS-MS analysis, and used NMR to elucidate the structure of those natural products.

Currently, Joy is involved in managing the myxobacterial extracts and fractions library generation aiming to streamline the discovery of chemically diverse natural products with anti-infective properties.