Jones became interested in science as a freshman at high school, where she took part in a national Science Technology Engineering Program. She earned a BS in biochemistry at Syracuse University in 1999. Jones completed her PhD at Georgia State University and specialized in structural biology.
Jones received postdoctoral training in structural virology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She was a Pfizer postdoctoral researcher at Washington University in St. Louis working with Michael Gross on MassSpec-based protein foot-printing.