Julia Maibach is a group leader at the Institute for Applied Materials – Energy Storage Systems (IAM-ESS) at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). She studied Materials Science at TU Darmstadt and Chalmers University of Technology and obtained her PhD in Materials Science also at TU Darmstadt. Following a postdoctoral stay at Uppsala University, Julia Maibach started her independent line of research at KIT after being awarded a young investigator grant for the project InSEIde from the German Ministry of Education and Research She also heads the surface and interface analysis group at the IAM-ESS and coordinates the photoelectron spectroscopy activities in the Karlsruhe Nano and Micro Facility (KNMF). Her research focusses on understanding and designing interface layers in batteries based on insights from existing photoelectron spectroscopy techniques and newly developed in-situ approaches combining electrochemistry and photoelectron spectroscopy.