Ruth Plathe completed an undergraduate degree, with honours, in Optoelectronics at Victoria University. Her honours year was spent with the Melbourne University, School of Physics, Optics group. She then worked at Swinburne University until obtaining a position as an expeditioner with the Australian Antarctic Division; spending 2005 in Antarctica at Davis Base in the Vestfold Hills. Her position there included being responsible for the operation of the OH IR emissions project, maintaining and automating a Fourier-Transform spectrometer, Fabry-Perot spectrometer, Auroral Imager, 3 field photometer, wide-angle photometer and UV spectrometer. She then started working at the Australian Synchrotron in 2006 on the Protein Crystallography Beamline as a Scientific Support Officer, before moving to the Far-IR beamline to pursue her interests in Atmospheric Physics.