In 1998 De Visser obtained her master's degree in Biomedical Science at Leiden University (cum laude).
In 2002 she got her PhD degree at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam with her thesis The impact of self-antigen expression on the CD8+ T cell repertoire: Implications for anti-tumor immunity.
She spent two years in California, before returning to the Netherlands Cancer Institute where she started working on inflammation and carcinogenesis.
De Visser launched her independent career at the Netherlands Cancer Institute, where she started working on tumour biology and immunology.
She works closely with Marleen Kok on translation of her findings to clinical environments, including looking to understand the landscape of breast cancer patients treated with checkpoint inhibitors.