Melissa H. Watt, PhD
Associate Professor
University of Utah, Department of Population Health Sciences
Dr. Melissa Watt is an Associate Professor of Population Health Sciences at the University of Utah School of Medicine. She has expertise in qualitative methods, intervention development and global health. She is a co-investigator with the Leung Lab, supporting and leading the qualitative work for the lab’s research around using an electronic clinical decision support tool (eCDST) for improved pediatric diarrheal etiology prediction in low-resource settings. Dr. Watt is deeply committed to teaching and mentorship. She holds a teaching appointment in the University of Utah Honors College, where she directs the Honors Integrated Minor in Health.
Ben Brintz, PhD
Research Assistant Professor
University of Utah, Division of Epidemiology
Ben received his BA (2010) in math from Grinnell College in Iowa. He received his MSc (2014) and PhD (2018) in statistics from Oregon State University where his research extended models for estimating abundances that are imperfectly detected to the application of disease surveillance. He originally joined Dr. Leung’s lab as the data scientist postdoctoral fellow, working on clinical decision rules for pediatric infectious diarrhea. He is currently a Research Assistant Professor in the Division of Epidemiology and continues to work with Daniel on projects related to clinical prediction tools. In his spare time, Ben likes to run, climb, play chess, and watch NBA basketball with his wife.
Andrew T. Pavia, MD, FACP, FAAP, FIDSA
George and Esther Gross Presidential Professor
University of Utah, Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases
Dr. Pavia is the George and Esther Gross Presidential Professor and past Chief of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases and adjunct Professor of Medicine at the University of Utah. He also serves as Director of Hospital Epidemiology at Primary Children’s Medical Center and Associate Director of the Antimicrobial Stewardship Program. He received his MD from Brown University and was a resident and Chief resident in Medicine at Dartmouth. He served as an EIS officer and Preventative Medicine Resident at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) where he worked on diarrheal disease and HIV. He did Pediatric and Adult ID fellowship at the University of Utah. Dr. Pavia’s research, public health, and policy work has focused on emerging infectious diseases and pandemic preparedness. He is an ongoing collaborator and is involved with many projects within the Leung Lab.