Herlinde De Keersmaecker obtained in 2012 the degree of Master in Science, Biochemistry and biotechnology, at KULeuven with great distinction. The same year, she started as a doctoral student in the laboratory of Biomolecular network dynamics under supervision of prof. Hideaki Mizuno at the Department of Chemistry, KULeuven and received a personal grant from Institute for the Promotion of Innovation through Science and Technology (IWT). The research mainly focused on super-resolution fluorescence microscopy for the study of signal transduction. In 2017, she joined the group of Prof. Steven De Feyter at the KULeuven as a postdoctoral researcher to study topological aspects of higher order nucleoprotein complexes involved in HIV integration by AFM. In 2018, she started as microscopy specialist for the Centre of Advanced Light Microscopy at Ghent University.