Nordbring-Hertz graduated with a medical licentiate degree with a thesis on the opportunistic human pathogenic fungus, Candida albicans, 1956 at Lund University,[3] and received a doctorate in microbiology in 1974 at the same university, working on nematode-trapping fungi.
[4] After her doctorate she took over responsibility for the department of microbial ecology, a position she held from 1975 until 1989.
[5] Nordbring-Hertz's research mainly dealt with a type of microfungi, so-called nematophagous fungi, that infect and digest nematodes.
Her work was later focussed on specific recognition mechanisms, e.g. by lectins (carbohydrate-binding glycoproteins) on the trap surface that recognise specific carbohydrates on the nematode surface and start the infection process.
[11][12] Her research also examined volatile exudates from nematodes,[13] the fungal plant pathogen Verticillium dahliae,[14] and quantifying the presence of the fungus in soil ecosystems.