Tari Mills, Ph.D.
Professional Specialist

Practice Areas

Experience

Dr. Tari Mills is a professional specialist in Nixon Peabody’s Intellectual Property group. Dr. Mills assists the attorneys of this group in all aspects of patent prosecution, patentability assessment, and patent portfolio management.

Dr. Mills obtained her BSc. (Hons) and MSc. in biology and zoology, respectively. For her undergraduate and master’s research, she studied the activities and regulation of metabolic enzymes that allow marine organisms such as corals and intertidal fishes and worms to adapt physiologically and biochemically to the ever changing environment of the respective organisms. For her doctoral degree, Tari turned to molecular protein biochemistry and structure and function studies. Tari uncovered the function and regulation of unique structural proteins in unicellular amoebae using molecular, cellular, and biochemical techniques. After obtaining her Ph.D., Tari continued with postdoctoral training in cellular neuroscience, working on cellular proteins in the brain that are associated with Alzheimer’s disease.

At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tari specialized in using a combination of bioinformatics, genomics, microscopy, molecular, cellular, and biochemical techniques for the discovery and characterization of novel structural neuronal proteins in the nematode worm and in the human genome. She also made worm animal model of the mouse prion disease, a model for the human form of the “mad cow disease.”

Life Sciences Specialty

• Enzymology
• Protein Biochemistry
• Protein structure & Function
• Molecular and Cellular Biology
• Cellular Neuroscience
• Neurological diseases and disorders
• Bioinformatics

Education

University of Georgia, Ph.D.