Barbara Ryden received her Ph.D. in astrophysical sciences from Princeton University, New Jersey. After postdocs at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics, she joined the astronomy faculty at The Ohio State University, where she is now a full professor. She has more than twenty-five years of experience in teaching, at levels ranging from introductory undergraduate courses to advanced graduate seminars. She won the Chambliss Astronomical Writing Award for her textbook Introduction to Cosmology (Cambridge, 2016).