In 1980 she received her
Master's degree in
biology with
chemistry at
Leiden University. For the main part of her PhD she worked at the
Dana–Farber Cancer Institute,
Harvard Medical School in
Boston, supervised by
Dr. Cox P Terhorst. During this time she unraveled the structure of the
CD3/T cell complex. After graduation she worked with
immunologists Dr Jan E de Vries and
Dr Hergen Spits in
the Netherlands. She obtained her Ph.D. degree from Leiden University in 1985. In 1987, she received a 5-year personal fellowship from The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research. In 1992, she became staff scientist at the
Netherlands Cancer Institute and was named the head of the Division of Immunology in 2002. In 1999, she was appointed professor in Experimental
Oncology at the
University of Amsterdam. ==Awards==