[3][4][5][6] In 1996, Nikolopoulos completed his bachelor's in computer engineering and informatics at the University of Patras.

[6] In 2001, he started his academic career as a visiting assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

In 2002, he joined the College of William & Mary, as an assistant professor of computer science.

[6] In 2012, he was appointed to the chair of high-performance and distributed computing, and as a professor and director of research at Queens University Belfast.

In 2016, he was also appointed as the head of the School of Electronics, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.