Lidia received a BSc degree from Krasnoyarsk State University in Russia and a master's degree from the Institute of Protein Research in Moscow. She then moved to Finland to work with Leevi Kääriäinen on the replication of RNA viruses for her PhD. Her postdoctoral studies led her to Harvard Medical School with a fellowship from the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. She studied there mechanisms involved in regulation of non-coding transcription in Steve Buratowski's lab. In 2009, Lidia obtained a Wellcome Trust Career Development Fellowship and started her own research group at the Department of Biochemistry in Oxford.