Dr. Ryan is Home Secretary of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of The National Academy of Sciences (2005-present). He was previously Chairman of the IOM Membership Committee. He is the Executive Vice President of The National Academies Corporation (TNAC).

Dr. Ryan served as Chair of the Department of Ophthalmology of the University of Southern California (USC) from 1974 to 1995. He served as Dean of the Keck School of Medicine of USC from 1991 to 2004 and as Senior Vice President of USC from 1993 to 2004. He currently holds the Grace and Emery Beardsley Chair and is the Distinguished Professor of Ophthalmology.

From 1982 to 1985, he was a Member of the NIH National Advisory Eye Council (NAEC) and subsequently Chair of the Retina Panel for the NAEC. From 1975 to 1979, Dr. Ryan served as a Member of the Visual Sciences "A" Study Section in the Division of Research Grants at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

An internationally recognized expert in the field of retinal diseases and ocular trauma, Dr. Ryan has provided congressional testimony on numerous occasions for more than 25 years in support of the NIH and the National Eye Institute.

Dr. Ryan is a member of numerous ophthalmologic organizations and has served as President of a number of them. As a Board member of the International Council of Ophthalmology, Dr. Ryan has organized and chaired the Scientific Program Committee for the last three World Ophthalmology Congresses. He is President of the International Council of Ophthalmology Foundation.

Dr. Ryan serves on the Boards of the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation, Johns Hopkins Medicine, and the W. M. Keck Foundation and Allergan, Inc. He is the author or editor of 9 books, including RETINA (4th edition), the author of over 270 articles in the scientific peer-reviewed literature, has delivered over 30 named lectures, and has received over 20 prestigious honors and awards.

Dr. Ryan was awarded his M.D. from The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and after residency training there at the Wilmer Institute, served on the Johns Hopkins faculty as Assistant and Associate Professor. Some of Dr. Ryan's awards include: The Johns Hopkins University Society of Scholars Award and the 2005 Distinguished Alumnus Award, the American Academy of Ophthalmology Senior Honor Award and the Distinguished Service Award, the Research to Prevent Blindness, Inc., the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology Kupfer Award for Distinguished Public Service, the Pan-American Association of Ophthalmology Benjamin Boyd Humanitarian Award, the Fight for Sight/Mildred Weisenfeld Lifetime Research Achievement Award, and the American Ophthalmological Society Lucien Howe Medal.