Nuria attained a BSc in Biology from the National Autonomous University of Mexico with a thesis on black widow spider alpha-latrotoxin cloning and expression in bacterial vectors, and an MSc in Quantitative Genetics and Genome Analysis from the University of Edinburgh.

After graduating from college, Nuria worked with a non-governmental organization (NGO) at the Lacandona Rainforest in Chiapas, Mexico; coordinating the Payment for Environmental Services program. Working with rural communities, she acknowledged the complicated equilibrium between biodiversity conservation, human welfare, and public policy; and how much accurate scientific information is required to optimise natural resource management and secure the provision of environmental services. Therefore, for her MSc dissertation, she used experimental evolution and statistical modelling to assess the adaptation of marine phytoplankton communities to high CO2 environments to develop an understanding on how marine communities will respond to climate change.

Currently, Nuria is PRORISK ESR 12 and a PhD student in the Doctoral Program of Water Science and Technology of the University of Girona, with Dr Anna Romani from the University of Girona and Dr Helena Guasch at the Centre of Advanced Studies of Blanes (CEAB) as co-supervisors. ESR12 focuses on assessing structural and functional changes in fluvial biofilms in response to contaminants and helping to translate these changes into ecosystem service loss.