Michael Melvin is a practitioner and academic specializing in international finance. He currently has administrative and faculty roles at the Rady School of Management at the University of California, San Diego. As current executive director of the Kroner Center for Financial Research, he assists with their mission to conduct academic research on topics selected by a pension fund chief investment officer advisory council. Melvin is also director of the master of finance program and on the finance faculty at the Rady School of Management.

Prior to UCSD, he served as managing director and senior research advisor in multi-asset strategies at BlackRock. Prior to the BlackRock acquisition, he served as managing director and head of currency research and currency hedge funds at Barclays Global Investors. Prior to his time in industry, he was a professor of economics and dean’s council distinguished scholar at Arizona State University. His research focuses on international finance and market microstructure, largely related to currency markets. He's served as a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Board, the International Monetary Fund and the Bank for International Settlements as well as at several universities.