After primary school in Schloss Zeil and secondary school Leutkirch in Allgäu until 1981 Nick studied biology at the
Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg (1981–1986) with an exchange semester at the
University of St Andrews in
Scotland. He passed diploma exams in biology in
Freiburg and obtained a doctorate in 1990 with the grade
summa cum laude under the guidance of
Eberhard Schäfer (scientist). After research visits to the Frontier Research-Program, Wako-shi in
Japan and the CNRS-IBMP in
Strasbourg, he was appointed professor with Venia legendi in botany in 1996. As assistant and senior assistant at the Institute of Botany II in Freiburg he became youth research leader of the project „Dynamics of the plant cell skeleton – molecular cell biology in vivo“, which had been set up by the VW foundation, in 1999. In 2003 Nick was appointed professor of molecular cell biology at the
University of Karlsruhe at the Botanical Institut 1, and became its head in 1995. From 2004 until 2014 he was in addition academic dean at the Faculty of Chemistry und Biological Sciences. He refused positions at the universities of Frankfurt, Darmstadt und Salzburg. He received the State Award Baden-Württemberg together with Mathias Gutmann 2015 for the Initiative
Forum for Critical Transdisciplinary Studies (FKI). Nick is married with two children. == Honors ==