Dr. Kosten received her BA in Psychology from Purchase College in New York in 1978 and her Ph.D. from Yale University in 1986 where she investigated neural mechanisms of taste and feeding behavior. She began conducting research in addictions under the mentorship of Eric J. Nestler, M.D., Ph.D. and Bruce J. Rounsaville, M.D. in the Department of Psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine in 1987 where she was on the faculty until 2006. She then became an Associate Professor in Psychiatry and later Professor at Baylor College of Medicine. In 2014, she joined the faculty at University of Houston as a Professor of Psychology.

Dr. Kosten is the Head of the UH Developmental, Cognitive, and Behavioral Neuroscience Program in Psychology, the Scientific Director of the UH Animal Behavior Core, a member of the advisory board for Texas Institute of Measurement, Evaluation, and Statistics and a member of the steering committee for the UH Drug Discovery Institute. She is also a member of the Biology of Behavior Institute and Texas Research on Addiction Consortium at UH. She is active in several scientific organizations including College on Problems on Drug Dependence, Research Society on Alcoholism, Society for Neuroscience, International Society for Developmental Psychobiology, and is on the organizing committee of Behavior, Biology, and Chemistry: Translational Research in Addiction.