David Mills is a Professor in the Departments of Food Science & Technology at the University of California at Davis. Dr. Mills studies the molecular biology and ecology of bacteria that play an active role in gut health or fermented foods and beverages. In the last 20 years Dr. Mills has mentored over 30 graduate students and postdocs and published more than 100 papers, including seminal work on lactic acid bacterial and bifidobacterial genomics. At UC Davis, Dr. Mills co-founded the Milk Bioactives Program—a successful multidisciplinary effort to define, investigate and translate the beneficial aspects of human milk and its role in human health. Dr. Mills has served as a Waksman Foundation Lecturer for the American Society for Microbiology and currently serves as an associate editor for the journal Microbiology. In 2010 Dr. Mills was awarded the Cargill Flavor Systems Specialties Award from the American Dairy Science Association and in 2012 he was named the Peter J. Shields Chair in Dairy Food Science. Dr. Mills also serves on the Science/Research Advisory Boards of several food and health-focused companies and his research has helped launch two start up companies.
Dr. Mills obtained a Bachelors of Science in Biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he subsequently worked as a technician for Dr. John Markley. In 1991, he obtained a Masters degree in Biochemistry with Dr. Michael Flickinger (then) at University of Minnesota, followed by a PhD in 1995 working with Dr. Gary Dunny and Dr. Larry McKay. After postdoctoral studies at North Carolina State University with Dr. Todd Klaenhammer, Dr. Mills took a faculty position at UC Davis.