Lot de Witte is a physician-scientist, trained as a clinical psychiatrist and cell biologist. She combines her clinical and research expertise to study mechanisms of psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders. Working as a psychiatrist at an outpatient clinic for people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and other neurodevelopmental disorders, she experiences the need to increase our understanding of the mechanisms underlying ASD at a daily basis.

During her Ph.D. project in the Department of Molecular Cell Biology and Immunology of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and subsequent postdoctoral work, de Witte studied the role of myeloid cells in viral infections. She used the obtained expertise in cell biology and immunology to start her own research line afterwards, focusing on neuroimmune mechanisms of psychiatric disorders. She started this research line at the University Medical Center Utrecht and established her own lab at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York.

de Witte is currently affiliated with the Radboud University Medical Center as well as the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. It is her mission to contribute to our understanding of how microglia, the immune cells of the brain, contribute to neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders, and to develop immune-based treatments for these conditions. She approaches these aims by studying microglia in autopsy material, by using human induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) models, and by studying pregnancy cohort studies in relation to the effects of maternal immune activation.