Gianne Derks studied Mathematics at Eindhoven University of Technology and obtained her PhD from Twente University, both in the Netherlands. She was a postdoctoral fellow at University California Santa Cruz and the Mathematical Sciences Institute (Berkeley), both in the USA, and at Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, Canada). In 1995 she joined the University of Surrey in the UK, where she became full professor in Mathematics in 2014. She held a three-year Hedda Andersson visiting professorship at Lund University (Sweden) from 2020-2023. In May 2023, she returned to the Netherlands and became scientific director of the Mathematical Institute at Leiden University.

Her research is in nonlinear dynamical systems in the areas of nonlinear partial differential equations, geometry and mechanics, patterns and symmetry, and biological models. Recurrent topics in her research are slow-fast systems, solitons and fronts in symplectic and multi-symplectic systems, relative equilibria in Hamiltonian systems and effects of perturbations on those objects. Apart from fundamental mathematical questions in those areas, she is also interested in applications in physics, engineering and life sciences. Currently she works on mathematical modelling of cancer treatments, sleep-wake and circadian cycles, and ecologically based models.