Nisreen Okba graduated from the Faculty of Pharmacy, Tanta University with a BSc (Hons) in Pharmaceutical Sciences. She began her career as a pharmacist at the Egyptian Ministry of Health and later worked as a teaching assistant in the Department of Microbiology at the Faculty of Pharmacy, Al-Azhar University. During this time, she also obtained an MSc in Pharmaceutical Microbiology from Tanta University.

Her interest in virology began through her connection with Dr Ali Zaki, the discoverer of MERS-CoV. She subsequently joined the Viroscience Department at Erasmus Medical Center, initially as a visiting researcher and later as a PhD candidate and postdoctoral researcher, focusing on coronaviruses.