Professor Jonathan Mill

Head of Department, Clinical and Biomedical Sciences, University of Exeter

Jonathan is Professor of Epigenomics at the University of Exeter Medical School where he heads the Complex Disease Epigenomics Group. He graduated with a degree in Human Sciences from Oxford University, where he took a particular interest in cannibalism, before undertaking his PhD in psychiatric genetics at the Social, Genetic & Developmental Psychiatry Research Centre at the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London. After spending three years as a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto, he returned to the Institute of Psychiatry to establish the Psychiatric Epigenetics group. He was appointed as Professor of Epigenomics at the University of Exeter in September 2012.

His group takes an integrated genomics approach to complex disease, with a particular focus on diseases affecting the central nervous system. His team is currently studying the causes and consequences of molecular variation in the brain and the role this plays in both neurodegenerative disease (e.g. Alzheimer’s disease, ALS, and other types of dementia) and neurodevelopmental conditions (e.g. autism, and schizophrenia).  His group was funded as part of the NIH Epigenomics Roadmap Initiative, representing the only award made under this scheme outside of North America and putting them at the forefront of complex disease epigenomic research. They are also the only UK group involved in the PsychENCODE consortium, profiling epigenomic variation in autism brain and across neurodevelopment.

Jonathan has received numerous international awards and prizes. These include both a Young and Distinguished Investigator Award from the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation, an Advanced Investigator Award from the American Asthma Foundation, the British Medical Association’s Margaret Temple Award, and the ISPG Theodore Reich Prize from the International Society of Psychiatric Genetics. Jonathan is an ISI Web of Science “Highly-Cited Researcher”, ranking in the top 1% of researchers by citations for field and year. He is a member of the Medical Research Council (MRC) Neuroscience and Mental Health Board, and sits on grant adviory boards for Autistica and the Alzheimer’s Society.