Mitchell is a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
He holds an affiliate appointment in the Department of Microbiology and is a faculty member of the Carl R.
Woese Institute for Genomic Biology.
His research focuses on the chemical biology of natural products.
He is known mainly for his work on the biosynthetic enzymology of ribosomally synthesized and post-translationally modified peptides (RiPPs) and genome-guided natural product discovery.