Nichola began her career as an Assistant Scientific Officer at the Laboratory of the Government Chemist in London before moving into the NHS to manage the bone densitometry unit at St George’s Hospital, Tooting. She moved into Epidemiology in 1994 when she joined the University of Cambridge, firstly with the Bone Research Group and subsequently the EPIC-Norfolk group.

Nichola held a number of research co-ordination and management positions before leaving the EPIC-Norfolk team at the end of 2018:

• Research Coordinator for the European Prospective Osteoporosis Study (EPOS). Activities included the co-ordination of a mobile bone densitometry (DEXA) unit measuring study participants throughout Norfolk.
• Management of the Norfolk arm of the Advanced Detection of bone Quality (ADOQ) study. A European collaboration collecting normative data for a novel 3D pQCT scanner measuring bone micro-architecture.
  Research Coordinator involved in the initial set-up of a pharmaceutical clinical research trial looking at bone micro-architecture in post-menopausal women.
• Local Research Coordinator for EPIC-Norfolk third health check in Norfolk.
• Research Coordinator and Site Manager (seconded to the MRC Epidemiology Unit) for the EPIC-Norfolk fourth health check in Norfolk.
• Research Manager based at the Norwich Clinic for the EPIC-Norfolk fifth health check.

Nichola was Member of the EPIC-Norfolk senior management research steering committee and Chair of the EPIC-Norfolk Participant Advisory Panel (EPAP) .