Before joining Michigan Law, he was an Assistant Professor at the University of New Hampshire School of Law. He holds a PhD in Biological Sciences and a JD, both from Columbia, and an AB from Harvard. He clerked for the Honorable Carlos T. Bea on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and was then appointed as an Academic Fellow at the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School. Nicholson teaches patents and health law, and studies innovation in the life sciences, with a recent focus on big data and machine learning in medicine. He recommends reading Brust, Bujold, and Butcher. His work has appeared in Nature, Science, Nature Biotechnology, the Michigan Law Review, and elsewhere. Nicholson is cofounder of Regulation and Innovation in the Biosciences and co-chair of the Junior IP Scholars Association.