Ingrid Dijkgraaf graduated with specialization in Organic Chemistry at Wageningen University. Subsequently, she worked on synthesis and biologic evaluation of alpha-v-beta-3-binding peptides and peptidomimetics at the Department of Medicinal Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Utrecht University and at the Department of Nuclear Medicine at the Radboud University Nijmegen. After obtaining her PhD, she worked as postdoc at the Technical University of Munich, the Radboud University of Nijmegen and The Scripps Research Institute.
Since 2011, she is working at Maastricht University. Focus of her research is design and synthesis of peptides and proteins using Solid-Phase Peptide Synthesis and Native Chemical Ligation. These compounds are conjugated with chelators, fluorescent labels, and multimodality tags allowing molecular imaging of cardiovascular diseases and cancer. Synthesized compounds are evaluated in in vitro and in vivo studies.