Titia de Lange was a graduate student with Piet Borst at the Dutch Cancer Institute where she studied antigenic variation in Trypanosoma brucei. After receiving her Ph.D. in 1985, she joined the laboratory of Harold Varmus at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. de Lange joined The Rockefeller University in 1990 as an Assistant Professor. She was appointed a tenured Professor in 1997 and the Leon Hess Professor in 1999. She is a Professor of the American Cancer Society and the Associate Director of the Rockefeller University Anderson Cancer Center. Her research is focused on the protective function of mammalian telomeres and their role in aging and cancer.

Dr. de Lange is an elected member of the Dutch Royal Academy of Sciences, the European Molecular Biology Organization, the US National Academy of Sciences, the American Society for Microbiology, the American Academy for Arts and Sciences, the New York Academy of Sciences, and the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences. Among her awards are the inaugural Paul Marks Prize for Cancer Research from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, the Charlotte Friend Memorial Award and the Clowes Memorial Award of the American Association of Cancer Research, and an honorary doctorate from the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands.