Dr. Nixon is Professor and James T. Doluisio Fellow in the Division of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University of Texas at Austin College of Pharmacy.

Dr. Nixon received a Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Texas at Austin under the mentorship of the late Dr. Abram Amsel with co-mentorship from Dr. Steven W. Leslie. She went on to the Bowles Center for Alcohol Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Fulton Crews. While at UNC, she was the first to discover the effect of alcohol on adult neurogenesis, an area where her lab continues to lead the field today. Prior to returning to the University of Texas at Austin, Dr. Nixon rose through the ranks to full professor at the University of Kentucky College of Pharmacy in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences. Dr. Nixon’s lab utilizes novel approaches to understand the causes and consequences of alcoholic neuropathology, focused primarily on adult neural stem cells and their contribution to alcohol-induced damage and recovery from AUDs, as well as the role microglia play in the development of AUDs in adolescence.  Dr. Nixon’s work has received numerous awards including a 2003 Enoch Gordis Research Recognition Award from the Research Society on Alcoholism, the 2008 Young Investigator Award from the Research Society on Alcoholism and a 2009 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) awarded by President Barack Obama.