Richard H. Ebright, Ph.D., is Board of Governors Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Rutgers University and Laboratory Director at the Waksman Institute of Microbiology.  He directs a laboratory of approximately fifteen postdoctoral associates, graduate students, and technicians and serves as project leader on two National Institutes of Health research grants ("Bacterial Transcription Complexes" and "Therapeutics for Drug-Resistant Bacteria").

His research focusses on the structure, mechanism, and regulation of bacterial transcription complexes, and on the development of inhibitors of bacterial transcription as antituberculosis agents and broad-spectrum antibacterial agents.  His research employs tools of structural biology, biophysics, and drug-discovery.

He received his A.B. (Biology, summa cum laude) and Ph.D. (Microbiology and Molecular Genetics) degrees from Harvard University.  He performed graduate research at Harvard and the Institut Pasteur and was a Junior Fellow of the Harvard University Society of Fellows.  In 1987, he was appointed as a Laboratory Director at the Waksman Institute and a faculty member at Rutgers University.  From 1997 to 2013, he was co-appointed as an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.