Nathalie received a Master's degree in Physiology/Endocrinology from Laval University. Under the supervision of Dr Helene Bachelard she studied the hemodynamic effect of insulin on regional blood flow and glucose uptake in awake rats. Later, as a Heart & Stroke Foundation of B.C. & Yukon Research Trainee, she received her Ph.D. in Physiology from the University of British Columbia. During her Ph.D. in Dr. Ed Moore's Lab, Nathalie characterized glucose transport in healthy and diabetic endothelium using high resolution 3D fluorescence microscopy.

After a brief exposure to tissue engineering as a visiting scientist in the Leibniz Research Laboratories in Hannover, Germany, she took a postdoctoral position at the University of California at Davis. There, in the Laboratory of Dr Sarah Yuan she developed FRET based assays in primary endothelial cells using a genetically encoded reporter (Drs. R. Tsien and A. Newton, UCSD). She used this biosensor to measure the spatiotemporal activity and role of PKC isoforms in endothelial cell permeability. Her current research in Dr Raffai's lab focuses on the roles of macrophage/monocyte derived apolipoprotein E in the vascular wall and its involvement in atherosclerosis regression.