Rate My Professor Jonathan Mill

Professor Jonathan Mill is Professor of Epigenomics at the University of Exeter Medical School in the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, where he serves as Head of the Complex Disease Epigenomics Group and Head of the Department of Clinical and Biomedical Sciences. He is also Neurodegeneration Theme Lead for the NIHR Exeter Biomedical Research Centre and Director of the £28.5 million UK Human Functional Genomics Initiative. Mill obtained a First Class Honours BA in Human Sciences from Oxford University in 1999, with a dissertation on cannibalism, and a PhD in Molecular Genetics from the Institute of Psychiatry, University of London, in 2003, focusing on functional genomics of complex psychiatric disease. After postdoctoral training, including a Canadian Institutes of Health Research fellowship at the University of Toronto's Krembil Family Epigenetics Laboratory from 2005 to 2007, he returned to the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London. There, he established the Psychiatric Epigenetics group in the MRC Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre, progressing from Lecturer (2007-2009) to Senior Lecturer (2009-2013) and Professor (2013-present). He was appointed Professor of Epigenetics at the University of Exeter Medical School in September 2012.

Mill's research expertise lies in epigenetics and epigenomics, particularly the role of epigenetic processes in mediating gene-environment interactions in complex diseases, with a focus on molecular variation in the human brain underlying neuropsychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, autism, major depression, and neurodegenerative conditions like Alzheimer's disease. Key publications include 'Methylomic profiling of human brain tissue supports a neurodevelopmental origin for schizophrenia' (Genome Biology, 2014), 'Methylomic profiling implicates cortical deregulation of ANK1 in Alzheimer's disease' (Nature Neuroscience, 2014), and 'Genome-wide association analyses identify 44 risk variants and refine the genetic architecture of major depression' (Nature Genetics, 2018). He has secured major funding, including £4.3 million for research into severe mental illness. Awards include the 2017 Theodore Reich Young Investigator Award, multiple Young Investigator Awards from the World Congress of Psychiatric Genetics (2001, 2003, 2007), the NARSAD Young Investigator Award (2008), and the British Medical Association Margaret Temple Award (2009).