Jacco van Rheenen was originally trained in a variety of imaging techniques during his PhD with Dr. Kees Jalink at the Netherlands Cancer Institute. He was among the first to optimize imaging and develop software to quantitatively measure FRET on confocal microscopes.
During his PhD in the lab of Dr. Jalink and as postdoc in the lab of Dr. Sonnenberg (Netherlands Cancer Institute) he used several microscopy techniques to study lipid signaling in tumor cells. In order to broader his scales, he obtained a KWF fellowship to do a postdoc in the United States in the lab of Dr. John Condeelis at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. There he extended his imaging experience by imaging mammary tumors intravitally including two-photon microscopy and became an expert in the field of intravital FRET imaging.
In 2008 he was appointed as group leader at the Hubrecht Institute, where he utilizes his imaging techniques to visualize processes that are required for the metastasis of tumor cells in living animals. In July 2014 he was appointed professor in Intravital Microscopy at the University Medical Center Utrecht. In October 2017 he became senior group leader at the Netherlands Cancer Institute (NKI) and the Oncode Institute. In 2009, he was awarded a VIDI award from Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research. In 2013, he received the Stem Cells Young Investigator Award. In 2015, he was awarded an ERC consolidator grant, in 2017 the Dr. Josef Steiner Cancer Research Foundation Award, and in 2019 the Ammodo Science Award.