After completing his B.Sc. and M.Sc. at the Agricultural University Wageningen (Netherlands), van Wijk obtained a PhD at the University of Groningen (The Netherlands). This was then followed by postdocs at the Dept. of Biochemistry, Stockholm University, Sweden and at the Carnegie Institute at Stanford University (CA). He then became assistant professor in 1997 at the Dept. of Biochemistry, Stockholm University and moved his lab in 2001 to Cornell University. In 2005 he was promoted to tenured associate professor level. In 2007 he became DGS for the Field of Plant Biology