About me
Femke van Wijk is a Professor in Tissue Immunology at the Center for Translational Immunology at the University Medical Centre Utrecht (UMCU) in the Netherlands. 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 national VICI career grant for her work on human naïve T cell imprinting. Her research program aims to elucidate peripheral and local 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, and juvenile dermatomyositis. Dr. van Wijk is (co)author of >100 publications in leading peer-reviewed journals and is participating in several international networks including T_CELL_CONNECT_EUROPE, Eureka Institute for Translational Medicine, and Federation of Clinical immunology Societies (FOCIS) that are aimed at (international) exchanges and training of young scientists, knowledge sharing, and enhancing reproducibility of human data.Since 2022, Dr. van Wijk has been the manager of research for the division of pediatrics at the Wilhelmina Children’s Hospital. In this role, Dr. van Wijk is responsible for research policy and talent management within the division and is committed to empowering the next generation of clinical scientists. Since 2020, Dr. van Wijk has also served as the scientific director of the Federation of Clinical Immunology Societies (FOCIS) Center of Excellence (FCE) and is a member of the international FCE committee, which stimulates the exchange of young researchers between FCEs worldwide.The emergence of new technologies and big data, along with increasing globalization, calls for strong scientific leadership. Dr. van Wijk is ambitious in further developing leadership skills and has recently completed two leadership programs as well as a Governance certificate course at Wagner, Amsterdam. The leadership areas Dr. van Wijk is active in include talent programs, mentoring, open science, creating an inclusive environment (as highlighted in the senior co-authorship “Women in science: tools to break the glass ceiling”), and team-based multidisciplinary science.Dr. van Wijk is an advocate for a transition in science towards less ego, more inclusivity, greater diversity, and more impact, as reflected in the inaugural lecture of 2023, titled “The Great Reset.”
