Ryan was born in 1981 in Wilmington, DE. As an undergraduate at Penn State University, he undertook research with Professor John Desjarlais in protein biophysics and Professor Raymond Funk in chemical synthesis. He earned his Ph.D. as an NDSEG predoctoral fellow with Phil Baran at The Scripps Research Institute, and then joined the laboratory of E. J. Corey at Harvard University as an NIH postdoctoral fellow. He began his independent career in 2010 at The Scripps Research Institute and was tenured in 2014. Since 2015, he has been the primary caretaker of 4 amazing kids while his wife undertook medical residency and the support of rural hospitals. Ryan's lab develops new chemistry to quickly access natural product chemical space and interfaces with biological groups to explore function.