Dr. Rick Wolf, Ph.D.

Program Director

Ph.D., Microbiology, University of Cincinnati
Postdoctoral work, Harvard Medical School

Dr. Rick Wolf is the Graduate Program Director (GPD) for and a co-developer of the M.P.S. program in Biotechnology. Dr. Wolf joined the Department of Biological Sciences in 1975, where he is now Professor of Biological Sciences. Dr. Wolf teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in Microbial Molecular Genetics and runs an active research lab that investigates mechanism of gene regulation in the bacterium Escherichia coli. His research has been funded for many years by the NIH and it is conducted primarily by doctoral students. His students have gone on to become tenured members of medical school faculties, founders of biotechnology companies, and scientific administrators.

One of Dr. Wolf’s most active, non-research interests is the development of new graduate programs. In 1981, he and Dr. John Hays of the UMBC Department of Chemistry formulated an M.S. program in Applied Molecular Biology (APMB), the purpose of which was to train middle-level scientists to become laboratory-research scientists in the then fledgling biotechnology industry.  As a research-project based program that teaches hands-on the methods of molecular biology and biotechnology, the program was the first of its kind in the country and was widely reviewed nationwide at its inception. Many of its 250+ graduates have taken employment with biotechnology companies while others have chosen to pursue advanced study as doctoral, medical, veterinary, and even law students. Following the APMB program, Dr. Wolf and Dr. Hays submitted a proposal for the initiation at UMBC of a Ph.D. program in Basic and Applied Molecular Biology.  Later, that program initiative was converted into a University of Maryland system-wide Ph.D. program in Molecular and Cell Biology (MOCB). Dr. Wolf was the first Graduate Program Director for MOCB at UMBC and he is currently the GPD for APMB. He also served for six years as the Chair of the Biological Sciences Departmental Graduate Program Committee. He is looking forward to achieving similar success with the Master in Professional Studies: Biotechnology and the associated Certificate: Biotechnology Management.