James H. Millonig of West Windsor received an Edison Patent Award from the Research & Development Council of New Jersey. He works at UMDNJ Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.
Millonig was recognized in the medical diagnostic category for “Compositions and Methods of Diagnosing Autism” (U.S. Patent 7,629,123). This patent’s research has, in part, lead to the launch of the ARISK Autism Risk Assessment Test.
After receiving a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from University of Rochester, Millonig studied at Oxford for a year and received a PhD in molecular biology from Princeton University, where he did his thesis research in Shirley Tilghman’s laboratory, using a mouse molecular genetics approach to study gene regulation. He was a post-doctoral fellow at Rockefeller University where he studied cerebellar development using a forward mouse genetic approach.
Millonig has been a faculty member at UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in the Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine and Department of Neuroscience and Cell Biology since 1999. “My laboratory became interested in autism research due to cerebellar anatomical abnormalities being consistently reported in individuals with autism,” he says. “Our research demonstrated that the ENGRAILED 2 gene is an ASD susceptibility gene.” He is also assistant dean of Medical Scientist Training and director of the UMDNJ-RWJ, Rutgers, Princeton tri-institutional MD/PhD program.
