A member of the faculty since 1992, Prof. Ryden studies the formation, alignment, and shapes of galaxies, and the large-scale structure of the universe, and cosmology, including tests for dark energy, dark matter, and the properties of the primordial density fluctuations. She is internationally known for her textbook Introduction to Cosmology, which won the first Chambliss Astronomical Writing Award in 2006 from the American Astronomical Society, and is now in its second edition, and she co-authored Foundations of Astrophysics with Prof. Bradley Peterson, a beginning-level text in astrophysics for astronomy majors. She is editor in chief of the Ohio State Astrophysics Series, a series of graduate level textbooks for Cambridge University Press. The first three volumes are Interstellar & Intergalactic Medium by Prof. Ryden and Prof. Richard Pogge (2021), Stellar Structure & Evolution by Prof. Marc Pinsonneault and Prof. Ryden (2023), and Celestial & Stellar Dynamics (2025). The final volume, Astrophysical Gas Dynamics, will be published in 2027. Stellar Structure and Evolution won the 2026 Chambliss Astronomical Writing Award from the American Astronomical Society.