Molly Mills
Clinical Assistant Professor
Environmental Health Sciences
Biography
Joining the Division of Environmental Health Sciences in 2025 as a clinical assistant professor, Dr. Mills has a passion for public health, environmental science and science education. She is generally interested in microbes and their relationship with human health and the environment. In her research, Dr. Mills uses molecular microbiology methods to study environmental, human and animal-associated microbial communities (microbiomes). She is interested in how humans impact environmental microbial communities, and how the environment impacts the human-associated microbiome and health. Her dissertation and post-doctoral work focused on the role of the environment in antibiotic resistance and its subsequent relationship with public health, particularly in fecal-polluted freshwater environments such as wastewater, urban river water and stormwater. She also has studied the development of the human gut microbiome in early life in communities facing water, sanitation and hygiene challenges.
Education
- PhD
- Environmental Science with a specialization in Environmental Public Health, The Ohio State University, 2022
- BS
- Biology, Mercyhurst University, 2018
Research interests
Environmental microbiology, microbial ecology, gut microbiome, antibiotic resistance, water quality, wastewater, metagenomics, One Health
Select publications
- Mills, M., Davis, A., Lancaster, E., Choi, B., Martin, J., Winston, R., & Lee, J. (2024). Longitudinal Analysis of Urban Stormwater Microbiome and Resistome from Watersheds with and without Green Infrastructure using Long-Read Sequencing. Water Research, 259, 121873. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.watres.2024.121873
- Mills, M., Mollenkopf, D., Wittum, T., Sullivan, M.P., & Lee, J. (2024). One Health Threat of Treated Wastewater Discharge in Urban Ohio Rivers: Implications for Surface Water and Fish Gut Microbiome and Resistome. Environmental Science and Technology, 58(30): 13402-13414. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.3c09070
- Mills, M., Lee, S., Choi, B., Piperata, B., Garabed, R., & Lee, J. (2023). Household environment contamination and subject age impact the gut microbiome and resistome of infants and young children from rural Nicaragua. Microbiome, 11, 207. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40168-023-01636-5
- Mills, M., Lee, S., Evans, M., Mollenkopf, D., Wittum, T., Sullivan, S.M.P., & Lee, J. (2022). Comparison of environmental microbiomes in an antibiotic resistance-polluted urban river highlights periphyton and fish gut communities as reservoirs of concern. Science of the Total Environment, 851(1): 158042. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.158042
- Mills, M.C. & Lee, J. (2019). The threat of carbapenem-resistant bacteria in the environment: Evidence of widespread contamination of reservoirs at a global scale. Environmental Pollution, 255, 113143. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2019.113143