Dr. Ricky Barrett Biography

Ricky is a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, where he works in the lab of Dr. Ellen Pure to better understand heterogeneity in the tumor stroma and how different cell types interact to influence tumor immune response with the direct goal of developing new stromal based therapeutics. He did his PhD in Biomedical sciences at the University of Central Florida, where he studied the role of innate immunity in metabolic disease. Ricky is currently managing collaborative projects with pharmaceutical companies in academic/industry partnerships. Moreover, Ricky is a leader in scientific communications. He has over 220k followers and 20M views on his science education content on platforms like TikTok and Instagram.

In this episode of Behind Biotech, we discussed:

Ricky’s nontraditional journey into science, including How his love for science began with (how a lot of relationships begin) a walk on the beach
How Ricky went from being a marine biologist studying how stingrays smell, to an immunoengineer developing new ways of curing cancer with the immune system and developing CAR-T for the treatment of cardiac fibrosis
The importance of empathetically and entertainingly communicating science to wide audiences through popular media, such as Instagram and TikTok (you can explore @rickyrick.phd)