Dr. Kimberly Nixon and Dr. Lucas G. Hill.
Two of the College of Pharmacy’s distinguished faculty were recently promoted due to their outstanding accomplishments in research, outreach and education. Kimberly Nixon, Ph.D. of the Division of Pharmacology and Toxicology will assume the rank of professor and Lucas G. Hill, Pharm.D., BCPS, BCACP of the Division of Pharmacy Practice will become a clinical associate professor. Both promotions go into effect September 1, 2021.
Dr. Nixon is a James T. Doluisio Centennial Fellow and member of UT Austin’s Waggoner Center for Alcohol Addiction and Research. She received a Ph.D. in Psychology from UT Austin and 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.
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.
Her 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.
Dr. Hill graduated from the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Pharmacy and completed a combined family medicine residency and faculty development fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. He now serves as director of the Pharmacy Addictions Research & Medicine (PhARM) Program.
He serves as the principal investigator for a five-year Texas Targeted Opioid Response (TTOR) grant which seeks to address the opioid crisis in Texas by educating health professionals and the public while conducting pragmatic research. He currently serves as chair of the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy Substance Use Disorder Special Interest Group and is an editorial board member for the Journal of the American College of Clinical Pharmacy. In 2020, Dr. Hill was awarded the American Pharmacists Association Generation Rx Award of Excellence in recognition of his outstanding contributions to addiction-related education.
Congratulations to Drs. Nixon and Hill, whose tireless work brings the college overwhelming amounts of prestige, acclaim and pride.