Izak (Ieke) Moerdijk studied Mathematics, Philosophy and General Linguistics at the University of Amsterdam. He received his PhD in Mathematics from the same institution in 1985, with the distinction Cum Laude. Subsequently he worked at the University of Chicago and at the University of Cambridge, before joining the Mathematics Department of the University of Utrecht in 1988. In 2011, he moved to Radboud University in Nijmegen.

Moerdijk was awarded a Huygens Fellowship from NWO in 1986 and a PIONIER grant, again from NWO, in 1995. He was elected member of the KNAW (Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences) in 2006. In 2011 Moerdijk received the Descartes-Huygens prize from the Académie des Sciences, and in 2012 the Spinoza award from NWO. He held visiting positions at Cambridge (St John's College), Montreal (McGill University), Sydney (University) and Aarhus, among others.

Moerdijk's current research interests include algebraic and differential topology (operads, Lie groupoids, ...), and applications of topological structures in mathematical logic. He is the coauthor of several well-known books, including "Sheaves in Geometry and Logic" with S. Mac Lane (Springer-Verlag, 1992, 1994), and "Introduction to Foliations and Lie Groupoids" with J. Mrcun (Cambridge UP, 2003).