Denise Johnson Montell is an American biologist who is the Duggan Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

[1] She moved to Stanford University for her graduate studies, where she investigated substrate adhesion molecules in Drosophila embryogenesis.

After ten years at Johns Hopkins, she was promoted to full professor, where she became founding director of the Center for Cell Dynamics.

[3] Cell motility is the process by which embryos develop, wounds heal and immune systems fight disease.

[1] Her husband is Craig Montell, a neuroscientist and distinguished professor in the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.