Dr. Bent is an assistant professor of clinical orthopedic surgery at University of Southern California and attending pediatrician at Children's Hospital Los Angeles.  She trained in pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco and then completed a fellowship in non operative pediatric orthopedics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is a co-director and site principal investigator of the Consortium of Technology in Pediatrics (CTIP 3.0), an FDA funded pediatric medical device accelerator with Drs. Yaniv Bar Cohen and Juan Espinoza at Lurie Children's Hospital. She currently focuses on the use of augmented reality in pediatric rehabilitation in children with cerebral palsy through an institutional KL2 Mentored Career Development grant. Melissa's other academic interests include health equity in orthopedics and rehabilitation, pediatric medical device and techequity, clubfoot clinical outcomes, and advancing the growing field of non operative pediatric orthopedics.