Charlotte Watts is Head of the Social and Mathematical Epidemiology Research Group in the Department for Global Health and Development at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). She assumed the role of Chief Scientific Advisor and Director of Research and Evidence at the UK Government's Department for International Development (DFID) from October 2015, spending four days a week at DFID, with one day at LSHTMfor research.
Originally trained as a mathematician, with further training in epidemiology, economics and social science methods, Dr Watts has more than 20 years' experience in international violence and HIV research, including founding the Gender, Violence and Health Centre in 2005. At LSHTM she manages a large portfolio of research, including acting as Research Director of the STRIVE structural drivers HIV Research Programme Consortium, and Chair of the Expert Working Group to Assess the Global Burden of intimate partner violence and child sexual abuse. She was a Core Research Team Member for the WHO multi-country study on women's health and domestic violence, and acted as senior researcher on intimate partner violence prevention trials in South Africa, Uganda, Cote D'Ivoire and Tanzania. She has served on Expert Consultations for UNAIDS, WHO, the World Bank, and UNICEF, and in 2014 was elected as an overseas member of the US institute of Medicine, for her services to violence and HIV research. Dr Watts was recently profiled in the Lancet.