New York born and raised, Nicolas Collins spent most of the 1990s in Europe, where he was the Artistic Director of STEIM (Amsterdam), and a DAAD composer-in-residence in Berlin. For many years he was a Professor in the Department of Sound at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Editor-in-Chief of the Leonardo Music Journal, and is currently a Research Fellow at the Orpheus Institute (Ghent). An early adopter of microcomputers for live performance, Collins also makes use of homemade electronic circuitry and conventional acoustic instruments.  His book, Handmade Electronic Music – The Art of Hardware Hacking (Routledge), now in its third edition, has influenced emerging electronic music worldwide. His memoir, Semi-Conducting- Rambles Through the Post-Cagean Thicket, was released by Bloomsbury in 2025.