Melissa Gerald is a program director at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the Division of Behavioral and Social Research at the National Institute on Aging (NIA). Gerald’s portfolio includes research, training, and fellowship projects in: Behavioral and Social Research on Aging in Animals; Caregiving and Care in Clinical Care and Long-term Care Settings; and Priority and Vulnerable Populations, and she oversees NIA’s Resource Centers for Minority Aging Research program. Gerald serves on NIA’s HIV/AIDS Working Group and on behalf of NIA on NIH’s Violence Research Working Group and Sexual & Gender Minority Research Coordinating Committee. She also represents NIH on the Elder Justice Interagency Working Group and as a federal member of the Family Caregiving Advisory Council overseen by the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. Before joining NIA, Gerald served as a scientific review officer at NIH’s Center for Scientific Review; Associate Professor in the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Puerto Rico, Medical Sciences Campus; and Scientist-in-Charge of the Cayo Santiago Field Station of free-ranging rhesus macaques. She received postdoctoral training in the Laboratory of Clinical and Translational Studies’ Primate Section within the intramural research program at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Gerald earned her bachelor’s degree in Anthropology and Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Anthropology at UCLA.Â