Tine Verdonck graduated as a medical doctor from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in 1997 and joined the Institute of Tropical Medicine (ITM) in Antwerp, Belgium in 1998. From 2000-2011, she worked as a representative of the ITM at the Instituto de Medicina Tropical Alexander von Humboldt (IMTAvH) in Lima, Peru. During this extended period abroad, she was involved in research as a fellow, PhD student, and in a postdoctoral position. Tine obtained a PhD degree from the University of Antwerp. Her thesis was about the epidemiology and clinical aspects of human T-lymphotropic virus 1 (HTLV-1) infection, a poorly known albeit frequent infection in Peru. Other topics she worked on include tuberculosis, HIV, leishmaniasis, and travel medicine. In 2012, Tine joined the unit of Epidemiology and Control of Tropical Diseases in the Department of Public Health.
Current research topics are syndromic approaches to diagnosing neglected tropical diseases, diagnostics, leishmaniasis, and HTLV-1. From a methods perspective, the emphasis is on epidemiology, statistics, and evidence synthesis.