Melissa Watt is an Associate Professor at the University of Utah, where she has a research appointment in the School of Medicine, Department of Population Health Sciences, and a teaching appointment in the Honors College. Dr. Watt has expertise in the development and evaluation of behavioral interventions, and the application of rigorous qualitative methods. She has a multi-disciplinary research program that applies social and behavioral research methods to understand and improve health outcomes in populations with stigmatizing health conditions, including HIV and substance use disorder. In the Honors College, she directs an integrated health minor that includes a summer learning abroad program in South Africa.

Before joining the faculty at the University of Utah, Dr. Watt was a DGHI faculty member for twelve years (2008-2020), where she worked with the Duke Center for AIDS Research and served as the Director of Graduate Studies in Global Health.

Dr. Watt received her PhD in Health Behavior from the Gillings School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina and an MA in Gender and Development at the University of Sussex (UK).