Melissa Dell grew up in Enid, Oklahoma. Her parents worked as civilian contractors at Vance Air Force Base where they managed a parts shop and ran a daycare center for military families.
Melissa Dell graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University in 2005 with a bachelor's degree in economics. She became the first student from her high school to enroll there.
One of her most cited research papers appeared in the scholarly journal Econometrica in 2010. The paper discussed Peru's Mining Mita and its long-term effects on local populations centuries after colonial rule ended.
Melissa Dell co-authored the work titled Temperature shocks and economic growth: Evidence from the last half century with Benjamin F. Jones and Benjamin A. Olken. Their findings explored the causal relationship between temperature shocks and long-term economic performance using data covering the last fifty years of global history.
Promotion to Full Professor occurred for Melissa Dell in 2018. She had joined the faculty at Harvard in 2014 as an assistant professor following a Junior Fellowship at the Harvard Society of Fellows from 2012 to 2014.