Nicola completed her Chemistry with Materials Chemistry MChem at the University of Edinburgh in May 2019. During this period, she undertook an in-house project supervised by Dr Fabio Nudelman. This project focused on the effect of self-assembling block copolymers in the nucleation of hydroxyapatite for dental applications. During her Masters, in September 2017 she spent 12 months as an exchange student completing a research project at Hong Kong University under the supervision of Prof. Yufeng Wang. During this time she investigated metal organic cage polymer hybrid systems with potential biological applications.

Nicola joined the Heise group in July 2019 as part of the MSCA funded project NanoCarb as a PhD student. She is working on the development of glycopolypeptide nanoparticles and their biomedical applications.