Michelle Mello

Michelle Marie Mello is an American empirical health law scholar. She is a Full Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and a Full Professor of Health Policy in the Department of Health Policy at Stanford University School of Medicine. In 2013, Mello was elected a member of the Institute of Medicine.

Early life and education
Mello was born and raised in California to parents David and Susan alongside two brothers. She attended Fred C. Beyer High School. During her junior year, Mello was named one of 12 finalists for the student representative position on the California Board of Education. As a senior, Mello was selected an Outstanding Young Woman by the Stanislaus County Commission.

After graduating from Beyer High School, Mello enrolled at Stanford University for her Bachelor of Arts degree. At Stanford, she double-majored in political science and applied ethics, and was part of the Ethics in Society honors program. Following her graduation in 1993, she received a Marshall scholarship to spend two years at the University of Oxford for her Master's degree and then chose to enroll in law school. While completing her JD at Yale Law School, Mello also completed her PhD at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Career
Following her PhD, Mello became an assistant professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health where she taught health policy and law. Early into her tenure at Harvard, Mello was a member of The Greenwall Foundation Faculty Scholars Program and she received a grant to fund her research project entitled "Ethical Issues in the Pharmaceutical Industry." Mello was also the recipient of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigator Award in Health Policy Research to study disclosure and compensation of medical injuries. Later during her tenure at Harvard, Mello led two large-scale projects evaluating 5 New York City hospitals' implementation of the communication-and-resolution program (CRP) in general surgery. The purpose of CRP was to investigate how hospitals and liability insurers could improve their responses to unanticipated care outcomes for patients and families. In 2013, Mello was elected a member of the Institute of Medicine for her impact in the field of public health.

In 2014, Mello left Harvard to become a professor of law at the Stanford Law School with a joint appointment as a professor at the Stanford School of Medicine. In 2022, Mello was awarded the 2022 John A. Benson Jr., MD Professionalism Article Prize by the American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation for her article, "When Physicians Engage in Practices That Threaten the Nation’s Health." She was also appointed as a member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine including on a committee studying the potential value of wastewater surveillance in the prevention and control of infectious diseases.

Personal life
Mello is married and has two sons.