Dr Mitchell is an Associate Professor of Genetics and Neuroscience at Trinity College Dublin (TCD), where he has also been Dean of Undergraduate Studies since 2018. His research seeks to understand how genes map out brain connectivity and influence individual human faculties, as well as psychiatric and neurological disease. He is especially interested in schizophrenia and autism, and variation in perception, including synaesthesia. His cross-disciplinary work on synaesthesia has contributed to the understanding of the genetic, developmental and neural basis of this unique perceptual condition. He is also a leading scholar in the genetics of neurodevelopmental disorders, having made many contributions and having recently edited a book on the subject. His group has discovered multiple genes which are involved in specifying neuronal connectivity in the developing brain, showing that mutations in such genes in mice can lead to neurological and behavioural symptoms which can replicate aspects of epilepsy, psychosis, and ADHD.
Dr Mitchell completed his PhD from the University of California at Berkeley in 1997 where he studied nervous system development, going on to carry out postdoctoral research at Stanford University using molecular genetics to study neural development in mice. He has developed and delivered multiple courses to undergraduate students at TCD on the field of Neurogenetics and has been the lead organiser of multiple iterations of the interdisciplinary and international Wiring the Brain conference, both in Ireland and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York. He is also an active communicator on X and writes a popular blog on the intersection of genetics, development, neuroscience, psychology, and psychiatry. He also regularly gives public lectures and media interviews on diverse topics, with the ambition of enhancing public understanding of neuroscience and genetics.
