Lindsey Macpherson, PhD

Oskar Fischer Endowed Professorship

Associate Professor, Neuroscience, Developmental and Regenerative Biology

Lindsey Macpherson joined the UTSA faculty in 2017. Her research interests include circuit mapping, sensory neuroscience, and functional imaging techniques.

Lindsey Macpherson joined the UT San Antonio faculty in 2017. Her research interests include circuit mapping, sensory neuroscience and functional imaging techniques.

Macpherson has nearly 5,000 citations to date and an h-index of 15, and her research has been published in multiple refereed journals including Chemical Senses, the Journal of Dental Research, Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience, and Cell.

Her work has also been supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Brain Research Foundation, among other notable organizations.

She serves as director for the Macpherson Lab at UT San Antonio, where she and her team investigate the sense of taste and the molecules, cells and signaling mechanisms involved in chemosensation from the tongue and gut to the brain.

Macpherson has chaired or been a member of thesis and dissertation committees for dozens of students. Her commitment to students was recognized with the UT San Antonio Graduate School Outstanding Graduate Mentor Award in 2024 and the University Excellence for Service Award for her department in 2022.

In addition to being the inaugural Oskar Fischer Endowed Professor, Macpherson is also an alumna of the National Academy of Sciences’ Kavli Fellows and a past recipient of a Jane Coffin Childs Fellowship, an NIH National Research Service Award (NRSA) Fellowship and a UT San Antonio Lutcher Brown Fellowship.

Macpherson earned her PhD in Chemical and Biological Sciences from Scripps Research Institute, advised by Nobel laureate Ardem Patapoutian. Prior to joining UT San Antonio, she was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University with Charles Zuker.