Lonneke graduated from Wageningen University and after obtaining a PhD, she continued her research on immune responses to avian pathogens at the Institute for Animal Health in Compton U.K. In 1998 she started at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine in the Netherlands where she investigated ruminant immune responses to intestinal parasites. In 2002 she started her own research group on Avian Immunology and her main scientific interests are ever since focused on how the innate immune responses to pathogens and vaccines in chicken drive adaptive responses and can be exploited for optimal protection. In 2013 she joined the Roslin Institute, University of Edinburgh, where she became Professor in Veterinary Immunology. She expanded her research to the field of in vitro mucosal organ cultures and organoids. In 2024 she started at Royal GD (Animal Health Service the Netherlands) as senior scientist continuing her work on organoids and novel immunological tools.