Richard Ward was raised in Bozeman, Montana, where he graduated from Montana State College. He received a PhD degree in biochemistry from the University of California in Berkeley and became a Member of the Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, NM. He served as a Virology Section Chief at the Environmental Protection Agency in Cincinnati, Ohio and later joined the Gamble Institute of Medical Research in Cincinnati where he eventually became the Director of Clinical Virology.  He joined Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center as a Professor of Pediatrics in 1995.  He is the author of nearly 200 scientific publications on viral biology and immunology.