Nicola’s MRes thesis was on ”Mechanical regulation of epidermal stem cell differentiation and growth” for which she was awarded the MRes Research Student Prize 08/09. She went on to study the role of NFκB in skin for her PhD project in the ICM Fibrosis Group at Newcastle University under supervision of Dr. Fiona Oakley (co-supervised by Dr. Julia Reichelt), and completed her PhD in March 2013. Since then she has been working as a Research Associate at the Institute of Human Genetics at Newcastle University.