Ryan began his scientific career as an HHMI undergraduate research scholar at New Mexico State University where he conducted an honors thesis on genetic determinants of dengue virus evolution. He then pursued and completed a doctoral degree at the University of Texas - Southwestern Medical Center where his work focused on transcriptional regulation of HIV, particularly as it relates to the virus's ability to rapidly emerge from latency. Ryan then conducted his postdoctoral research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine where he focused on extracellular events that facilitated pathogen takevoer, particularly in viruses that enter latent stages of infection such as HIV and herpesviruses.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Ryan was part of a group at UNC that identified variants of SARS-CoV-2 that were increasing in prevalence in the state of North Carolina. At the same time, other groups identified that similar variants were becoming the predominant form of the virus throughout North America.
