Femke van Wijk

Dr. van Wijk obtained her PhD on mechanisms of oral tolerance and allergic sensitization to peanut at the Utrecht University in 2006. After her first postdoctoral training in human immunology in the lab of Prof. B. Prakken at the UMCU she obtained a KNAW fellowship for a 2-year postdoc in the lab of Prof. H. Cheroutre in the La Jolla Institute for Immunology in La Jolla (USA) to work on tissue T cell adaptation . After being awarded a VENI personal fellowship, she moved to the UMCU to start her own research group. For her research on how antigen presenting cells sabotage T cell regulation in local inflammation van Wijk was awarded a prestigious ZonMw VIDI career development grant (2014), and in 2021 she received a ZonMw VICI grant for her work on naïve T cell imprinting and immune development. Her research program aims to elucidate tissue T cell responses in health and inflammation and to translate these insights into tools for (pre-clinical) disease monitoring and therapeutic targeting in chronic inflammatory diseases.  She takes a disease- and age-overarching approach to decipher common and specific pathogenic processes underlying different inflammatory conditions and one of her specific interests is early imprinting of disease. Diseases her group is working on include atopic dermatitis, inflammatory bowel disease, juvenile idiopathic arthritis, juvenile dermatomyositis and immune toxicity following immune therapy in cancer.

 Dr. van Wijk is the author of >100 publications in leading peer-reviewed journals and has extensive experience with national and international scientific advisory committees (NWO off-road program, samenwerkende gezondheidsfondsen PPS Immunology consortia, Sanofi type 2 innovation grant, EU Horizon 2020 REA-FET-OPEN and COFUND). She is participating in several international networks including T_CELL_CONNECT_EUROPE, Eureka Institute for Translational Medicine, and Understanding Childhood Arthritis Worldwide Network that are aimed at (international) exchanges and training of young scientists, knowledge sharing, and enhancing reproducibility of human data. In 2017 Dr. van Wijk received the PhD supervisor of the year award by the Utrecht University Graduate School of Life Sciences.

Dr. van Wijk is also manager research for the division paediatrics at the UMCU , and scientific director FOCIS (federation of clinical immunology societies) center of excellence.