Her main expertise lies in the area of Stellar Physics but she has wide interests in the broad applications of her expertise across different fields in Astrophysics. She is most known for her work on the lives, deaths, and afterlives of massive stars, in particular those that interact with a binary companion. She is also interested in the role that massive stars played throughout cosmic time and helped shape the Universe as we know it today. She is particularly eager to answer major questions about how such systems can end their lives as binary neutron stars and black holes, whose mergers can now be detected through gravitational waves.
De Mink received several recognitions for her work. These include her appointment as Scientific Member of the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (2020), the Pastoor Smeitsprize (2019) awarded by the Dutch Astronomical Society (NAC), election as a member of the Dutch Young Academy of Sciences (2018), the Merac prize in theoretical astrophysics (2017) awarded by the European Astronomical Society, a Beller lectureship (2017) awarded by the American Astrophysical Society, an ERC starting grant awarded by the European Research Council for her program BinCosmos (2016). She is also Vidi and Aspasia laureate awarded by the Netherlands Science Foundation (NWO, 2017)