Dr. Ryan Pearson is an Assistant Professor in the School of Pharmacy at the University of Maryland. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Pharmacy and was a postdoc at the University of Michigan prior to starting his independent career. Dr. Pearson’s laboratory focuses on developing nanotechnology-based strategies for treating dysregulated immune responses specifically focusing on allergy, infectious disease, and cancer. He has published his research in top journals including Biomaterials, Journal of Controlled Release, ACS Nano, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Advanced Functional Materials. Dr. Pearson’s significant scientific contributions relate to his development of nanoparticle-based inverse vaccines to induce antigen-specific immune tolerance and his fundamental discoveries of the inherent immunomodulatory properties of polymeric nanoparticles.
Dr. Pearson has been recognized with several awards for his research and recently received the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy New Investigator Award and the American Association of Immunologists Early Career Travel Award. Dr. Pearson is an active member of the Bio- and Nano-technology center and the Computer-Aided Drug Design Center center at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, and a member of the Marlene and Stewart Greenbaum Comprehensive Cancer Center. He is devoted to mentorship and outreach and is the AAPS UMB Student Chapter Faculty advisor and the secretary/treasurer of the Immuno Delivery Focus Group for the Controlled Release Society.