Dr. Eileen Ryan earned a B.A. in Physics from Rutgers University, a M.S. in Astronomy from New Mexico State University, and a Ph.D. in Planetary Geophysics from the University of Arizona.

Dr. Ryan is the Director/Senior Scientist of the Magdalena Ridge Observatory 2.4-meter telescope, an instrument whose mirror is the same size as the Hubble Space Telescope. She specializes in finding and characterizing Near Earth Objects, including asteroids, comets and manmade satellites. Dr. Ryan is also known for her work in the physics of collisions and catastrophic fragmentation.

She was a participating scientist on NASA's Double Asteroid Redirect Test (DART) spacecraft mission, which successfully demonstrated NASA’s ability to alter the orbit of an asteroid. DART was sent to the binary system Didymos, and kinetically impacted its small moon Dimorphos, as the first test of NASA’s deflection technology.

Dr. Ryan joined the Magdalena Ridge Observatory (MRO) in 2002. The MRO 2.4-meter Telescope is located on 1,000 acres at 10,600 feet in the Magdalena Mountains of the Cibola National Forest in Socorro County, New Mexico (NM). This multi-use research and educational observatory is built and operated by the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology (NMT) with offices located on the NMT campus in Socorro, NM.

As Director of the 2.4-meter Telescope, Dr. Ryan manages its technical, financial, and operational activities, and leads the development of scientific and military initiatives. She is the Principal Investigator of a NASA-funded Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) follow-up program, together with Co-Investigator Dr. William Ryan. This project has been funded by NASA since 2008 to obtain high-precision astrometry of near-Earth asteroids and comets, and to derive physical characterization data such as spin rates and spectral composition, to better assess the potential danger to Earth from these objects.