Ray L. Watts
The following biographical sketch was compiled at the time of induction into the Academy in 2025.
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Ray L. Watts is a Birmingham native, an alumnus of the University of Alabama at Birmingham
(UAB), and UAB’s longest-serving president. After graduating from West End High School,
Watts earned his bachelor’s degree with honors from the UAB School of Engineering in 1976. An
elective course in biomedical engineering sparked an interest in neurology that led to medical school
and ultimately a career in patient care, research, and leadership of a globally renowned research
university and academic medical center.
Watts earned his medical degree from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, graduating
as valedictorian in 1980. Following residencies and fellowships at Harvard Medical School,
Massachusetts General Hospital, and the National Institutes of Health, he was recruited to Emory
University in Atlanta, where he joined a team that created an internationally renowned research and clinical center for Parkinson’s disease and other movement disorders.
Watts returned home to Alabama and UAB in 2003 as the John N. Whitaker Chair of Neurology. He became senior vice president and dean of medicine in 2010, and in 2013, was named UAB president by unanimous vote of the University of Alabama System Board of Trustees. As president, he has led, with campus- and community-wide collaboration, development of comprehensive strategic plans—Forging the Future (2018-2023) and the current Forging Ahead (2024-2028)—as well as the Research Strategic Initiative, aimed at maximizing the positive impact of UAB research on lives locally, statewide, and beyond.
During Watts’s nearly thirteen-year tenure, UAB has made unprecedented strides in enrollment, nationally ranked academic programs, and access to higher education for first-generation students. Annual research expenditures increased 68 percent over the past ten years ($866 million in FY24), and UAB’s economic impact on Alabama exceeded $12.1 billion annually. UAB Hospital became the eighth-largest hospital in the U.S., and the statewide UAB Health System now includes UAB St. Vincent’s. New facilities are creating one of the most vibrant and state-of-the-art urban campuses in the nation, and community partnerships are improving quality of life throughout Birmingham and the state of Alabama.
Watts was named 2025 CEO of the Year by Business Alabama and 2021 CEO of the Year by Birmingham Business Journal. He is a member of the 2025 class of the Alabama Engineering Hall of Fame.
Watts continues to practice medicine, seeing patients once a week at UAB’s Kirklin Clinic, and he provides board leadership or service to UAB Health System, Southern Research, Birmingham Business Alliance, Innovation Depot, Leadership Birmingham, and UAB Center for the Arts.
During his residency at Massachusetts General, Watts met his wife, Nancy Patricia Angelo, a Bostonian and neurology nurse, and the two treated many patients together over the years. They have five grown children and eleven grandchildren.
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