Ray Lannom Watts (born December 18, 1953) is an American physician-researcher in neurology, educator and university administrator. Watts has served as the seventh president of the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) since February 2013. Education and Early Career, Research and Service A Birmingham native and graduate of West End High School, Watts earned a bachelor's degree in biomedical and electrical engineering (with honors) from UAB in 1976. Four years later, he graduated from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis as valedictorian of his class. Watts then completed a neurology residency, medical internship, and clinical fellowships at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, followed by a two-year medical staff fellowship at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). In 1986, Watts joined the faculty of Emory University in Atlanta as director of a team that helped create an internationally renowned research and clinical center for Parkinson's disease and other movement disorders. In 2003, Watts returned to UAB as the John N. Whitaker Professor and Chairman of the Department of Neurology. There he led the development of an interdisciplinary research program aimed at translating scientific breakthroughs into promising new therapies for neurodegenerative diseases and played a key role in the establishment of the UAB Comprehensive Neuroscience Center. He also served as president of the University of Alabama Health Services Foundation from 2005 to 2010. In 2010, Watts became Senior Vice President and Dean of the UAB Heersink School of Medicine, and later was named the James C. Lee Jr. Endowed Chair. In February 2013, Watts was named UAB's seventh president by unanimous vote of the University of Alabama System Board of Trustees. He has also served as chair of the UAB Health System Board of Directors and chair of Southern Research Board of Directors since 2013. Watts has co-edited three editions of "Movement Disorders: Neurologic Principles and Practice." He has authored or co-authored more than 130 peer-reviewed research articles published in journals including Annals of Neurology, Cell Transplantation, Experimental Neurology, Human Molecular Genetics, the Journal of the American Medical Association, JAMA Archives of Neurology & Psychiatry, Journal of Genomics, Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, Journal of Neuroscience, Journal of Neurosurgery, Movement Disorders, the New England Journal of Medicine, and Neurology. Watts was the lead author of the paper "Randomized, blind, controlled trial of transdermal rotigotine in early Parkinson disease" published in January 2007 in the journal Neurology, and the second