He obtained his undergraduate degree in chemistry from Vanderbilt University where he studied free radical atom transfer reactions with Professor Ned Porter. He then carried out graduate studies focused on protein engineering with natural and unnatural amino acids at The Scripps Research Institute under the guidance of Professor Peter Schultz. He comes to ASU from the University of Washington where he carried out postdoctoral studies in the field of computational protein design with Professor David Baker. Research in the Mills group focuses on the use of computational protein design methods to engineer proteins in which non-canonical amino acids carry out important functions.