A fourth generation Texan, Ry Young earned his doctorate in Molecular Biology (1975) as an NSF Graduate Fellow under Hans Bremer at the University of Texas at Dallas, studying control of ribosome synthesis. While studying gene transposition as an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard Medical School with Mike Syvanen, he discovered a new lambda gene involved in host lysis. This led to a long-term interest in the diverse molecular strategies used by phages to program, regulate and effect the lysis of the host cell, beginningin his first independent laboratory in 1978 in the new College of Medicine at Texas A&M University. In 1985, he moved his lab to the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, where in 1996 he was the first TAMU faculty member to receive an NIH MERIT Award. Over the ensuing decade, the Young group expanded into phage genomics and the translational applications of phage biology. Elected as a Fellow of the American Society for Microbiology and of the American Academy of Science, he was also named the Sadie Hatfield Professor of Agriculture in 2006. In 2010, he founded and became the first Director of the Center for Phage Technology, the only state-supported entity for translational research in phage biology in the U.S.