Nicole Theodosiou

Nicole Theodosiou is an Associate Professor of Biology and Co-Director of the Biochemistry Program at Union College. She teaches on all levels of the curriculum from introductory courses Cellular Foundations of Life and Topics in Molecular Biology, to a 300-level Developmental Biology and a senior seminar on Evolution and Development. From 2013-17, she was an adjunct faculty at the Mount Desert Biological Laboratory.From 2003-2007, she was an Visiting Assistant Research Professor in Developmental Biology at Bowdoin College. There she discovered her love of teaching and began her work studying the digestive tracts of elasmobranchs as part of an NIH-INBRE Maine consortium grant.

From 2000-2003, she was a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Cliff Tabin in the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School. There she took her interest in understanding the body plan to studying patterning of the digestive tract in vertebrates. 

In 2000, Nicole received her PhD in Genetics from Yale University where she trained under Dr. Tian Xu. Her project was to identify and characterize a gene found in a genetic screen for tumor suppressor genes in Drosophila. She discovered that further clonal analysis revealed this gene mutation could induce ectopic legs and wings! Thus began her interest in body patterning.

After college, she was a lab technician for Stuart Orkin at Children’s Hospital in Boston. Her career was anchored when one day Dr. Orkin entered the lab bay and cranked the radio volume on high because Dvorak cello concerto was playing on WBUR!

In 1991, she received her B.A. in Biology from Swarthmore College where she also concentrated in music performance. During high school she simultaneously attended the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, and earned a Certificate in Performance, Composition and Teaching. This certificate would serve her well in graduate school, where she taught piano lessons to make some extra income. (click here for recording).