Nikos leads one of the largest research programs for microbial genomics and metagenomics worldwide at the Joint Genome Institute of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. His research focuses on Bioinformatics, Genomics, and Data Science, with an emphasis on bacteria and viruses. He has authored more than 700 scientific publications in peer-reviewed journals, which have collectively garnered over 81,000 citations. Since 2014, he has been listed as one of the world's most influential scientists by Clarivate. He has received numerous international awards and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology.