Ryan completed his B.Sc. in Biological Sciences at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. He then completed a B.Sc.(Hons) in Biochemistry with Professor Juliet Gerrard, also at the University of Canterbury, where he studied the oligomeric state requirements of dihydrodipicolinate synthase. Continuing at the University of Canterbury, Ryan completed a Ph.D. in Cellular and Molecular Biology, under the mentorship of Professors Jack Heinemann and Anthony Poole. During this time he studied the evolution of translation initiation in bacteria, and the influence of horizontal gene transfer on this process. He was awarded a UC Doctoral Scholarship and the Claude McCarthy Fellowship to support this work. Ryan then moved to the Pasteur Institute in Paris where he spent 5 years as a Post-Doctoral fellow, under the mentorship of Professors Patrick Forterre and Jacques Oberto (Université Paris-Saclay, CNRS). His work at Pasteur focused on mobile genetic elements of hyperthermophilic Archaea, specifically the Thermococcales. During this time, Ryan discovered and characterized the first conjugative plasmid in Euryarchaeota, pT33-3, and developed this into a set of genetic tools for previously unmodifiable Archaea. Now, at the University of Georgia, Ryan works with Professor Michael Terns on the CRISPR-Cas systems of Thermococcales and their interaction with the mobile genetic elements he discovered at Pasteur. This has lead to the discovery of novel Anti-CRISPR proteins with exciting functions.
