Fr. Nicanor received his bachelor's degree in Bioengineering from the University of Pennsylvania in 1989, and in 1996 he earned a Ph.D. in Biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was a fellow of the International Human Frontier Science Program of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research/University College London from 1996 to 1997. He has his S.T.B. (2003) and S.T.L. (2005) from the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC, and went on to receive a doctorate in Sacred Theology from the University of Fribourg in 2015.
His areas of expertise are the biology of aging and programmed cell death, biology and ethics of stem cell research, health care ethics and bioethics in the Catholic tradition. He is currently a professor of Biology and Theology in Providence College, where he has been teaching since 2005. Fr. Nicanor has published several scientific and engineering papers, as well as the book
Biomedicine & Beatitude: An Introduction to Catholic Bioethics (Washington, D.C.; The Catholic University of America Press, 2011). He is also involved int he research project of
Thomistic Evolution.