Nikolaus is the faculty director of the Interdisciplinary Research Theme on Multi-functional Materials at the College of Engineering and Applied Science, and the founder and CTO of Robotic Materials Inc. Correll obtained a Diploma (Masters) in Electrical Engineering from the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich.

He spent the first two years of his studies at the Technische Hochschule München, participated in the Erasmus Programme to spend a semester at Lunds Tekniska Hogsköla working with Rolf Johansson and wrote his Diploma thesis at Caltech working with Alcherio Martinoli and Joel Burdick.

Correll did a post-doc with Prof. Daniela Rus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

[10] Correll's work on robotic materials has received worldwide media attention including the Associated Press,[11] Neue Zuercher Zeitung,[12] the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine,[13] and Popular Science,[14] among others.

Since starting at the University of Colorado in 2009, two of Correll's former PhD students have taken up faculty jobs at PhD-granting institutions: