Dr Rita Ryan, MD, FAAP, is a neonatologist in the Division of Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine at UH Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital and Professor of Pediatrics, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. She is board certified in pediatrics and neonatal-perinatal medicine and had been practicing clinical neonatology for more than 30 years.
Dr. Rita Ryan grew up in New York City and received her undergraduate degree in Mathematical Sciences from the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. She received her medical degree from SUNY-Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse, and stayed there for her Pediatrics residency. Rita then did her Neonatology Fellowship in Cincinnati where her research mentor was Dr. Jeffrey Whitsett, a premier lung molecular biologist. Rita was on the faculty at the University of Rochester for 11 years and then became Chief of the Division of Neonatology in Buffalo in 2000. In 2011, Dr. Ryan went to the Medical University of South Carolina to be the Chair of Pediatrics. After five years Dr. Ryan became an integral member of the MUSC Division of Neonatology including performing clinical service in the NICU, training fellows and continuing her research in the area of neonatal lung biology. One year ago Rita moved to Cleveland to Case Western Reserve and Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital, primarily to be closer to her children in Cleveland and Buffalo. Dr. Ryan now has over 135 peer-reviewed papers and is an Associate Editor for two journals, Journal of Perinatology and Pediatric Pulmonology. Dr. Ryan has been studying particularly the effects of hyperoxia for many years. Her disease of interest is bronchopulmonary dysplasia. Rita recently completed an NIH NHLBI grant titled “Prematurity and Respiratory Outcomes Program,” or “PROP,” as PI, and was also recently invited to speak at an NIH NICHD workshop on BPD. She currently is working on studying the natriuretic peptide family’s regulatory role in surfactant homeostasis, and has long been interested in fundamental surfactant biology. Because of her interest in hyperoxia and her clinical interest in ROP she will speak on “Oxygen and ROP.”