Lippincott-Schwartz received her PhD from Johns Hopkins University, and performed post-doctoral training with Richard Klausner at the NICHD, NIH in Bethesda, Maryland.

Lippincott-Schwartz's lab also tests mechanistic hypotheses related to protein and organelle functions and dynamics by utilizing quantitative measurements through kinetic modeling and simulation experiments.

[5] Along with Craig Blackstone, Lippincott-Schwartz utilized advanced imaging techniques to reveal a more accurate picture of how the peripheral endoplasmic reticulum is structured.

[8] Lippincott-Schwartz has dedicated her most recent lab research to photoactivation localization microscopy (PALM), which allows the viewing of molecular distributions of high densities at the nano-scale.

[2] She taught science at a girl's high school in Kenya for two years before returning to the USA and entering a Master's program in Biology at Stanford University where she worked on DNA repair in the laboratory of Philip Hanawalt.

[2] She then entered a Biochemistry Ph.D. program at Johns Hopkins University, where she worked in Douglas Fambrough's lab in the Carnegie Institution of Embryology[2] and studied the dynamics of lysosomal membrane proteins.

During this time, Lippincott-Schwartz began developing techniques to use green fluorescent protein (GFP) to visualize cellular trafficking pathways in living cells.