Nicola Gaston is the Director of the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology, a New Zealand Centre of Research Excellence, and a Professor in Physics at the University of Auckland, where her research group conducts quantum-mechanical simulations of the electronic and thermodynamic behaviour of nanoscale materials. The goal is to find new ways of making materials that address issues of sustainability – whether addressing issues of energy sustainability, or by designing materials to be more sustainably synthesized and indeed recycled.

She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi in 2023 for her important insights into the behaviour of low-temperature, liquid metals. She was awarded the Thomson Medal of the Royal Society Te Apārangi in 2023 for transformative leadership for the research, science and innovation sector. She also previously served as the elected President of the New Zealand Association of Scientists in 2014 and 2015.