Nikol Kirova is an interdisciplinary Bulgarian architect with an educational background in interior design, urban planning, and advanced architecture. Currently, Nikol is a teaching assistant and a researcher at IAAC, developing her PhD with a focus of her research is the integration of material innovation in design and architecture, as part of the IAAC-SWIN offshore PhD program, developed with the Swinburne University of Technology.

The common feature of her work is the search for alternative solutions for optimised construction, material informed design, and spatial communication. Her research interest lies in investigating how materiality in architecture and construction can be reestablished and propose better communication between the built environment and its inhabitants.

For a couple of years Nikol was developing Synapse, a smart material system for real-time urban flow data collection toward responsive environments and informed decision making. The novel research was awarded the Digital Matter and Intelligent Construction and the Artificially and Materially Intelligent Architecture excellence awards in 2018 and 2019.