Headshot of Kevin Mitchell.

Kevin Mitchell

Associate professor of genetics and neuroscience
Trinity College Dublin

Kevin Mitchell is associate professor of genetics and neuroscience at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland. He studies the genetics of brain wiring and its relevance to variation in human faculties, psychiatric disease and perceptual conditions such as synesthesia. His current research focuses on the biology of agency and the nature of genetic and neural information.

Mitchell completed his Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley, studying the genetic instructions that direct the development of the nervous system in the fruit fly, and his postdoctoral work at the University of California, San Francisco and Stanford University, exploring the same topic in mice. He is the author of “Innate: How the Wiring of Our Brains Shapes Who We Are” and “Free agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will.” He also writes the Wiring the Brain blog and is on X (formerly known as Twitter) @WiringtheBrain.

From this contributor

Explore more from The Transmitter

Ground squirrel.

How thirteen-lined ground squirrels illuminate retinal development

In most mammalian retinas, rods outnumber cones. But that ratio is flipped in ground squirrels, a quirk that helps Seth Blackshaw explore how retinal cells develop their identities.

By Sarah Thau
31 July 2026 | 5 min read
Research image of the association cortex.

Cortical territories compete in developmental space race

Sensory and association regions are established through a reciprocal process, according to a new model of cortical development.

By Holly Barker
30 July 2026 | 5 min read