* Kuipers graduated in 1986 in biology at Utrecht University.
* In 1988 Kuipers obtained an EMBO Fellowship for three month at the lab of Dr. J. Gallay of the University of Paris-Sud in Orsay (Paris) to study time-resolved Fluorescence. 
* In 1989 Kuipers received a SHELL fellowship to give lectures in the United States at Prof. Mahendra Jain (Newark), Prof. Michael Gelb (Seattle) and Prof. Yang (San Francisco) and on a conference about Time Resolved Fluorescence.
* In 1990 Kuipers obtained his doctorate at the University of Utrecht in biochemistry with the thesis Probing the mechanism of pancreatic phospholipase A2 by protein engineering.
* From 1990 to 1997 he worked as a project leader on molecular genetics at the Department of Biophysical Chemistry of NIZO food research, a contract research center in Ede (The Netherlands).
* From 1997 to 1999 he was head of genetics and research leader of the section Microbial Ingredients of the same institute.
* From 1999 Kuipers is professor and head of the ‘Molecular Genetics of Prokaryotes’ group of the Groningen Biomolecular Sciences and Biotechnology Institute (GBB) of the University of Groningen.