Ryan McGinn was born in southeastern British Columbia, Canada. He first began as a professional jazz musician, playing saxophone and flute. He then transitioned to study physics and then neural engineering at the University of Toronto, before completing his medical degree and completing a neurology residency at McMaster University followed by Epilepsy and Clinical Neurophysiology fellowships at Stanford University.

Dr. McGinn has a deep interest in clinical epilepsy, particularly with regards to advanced treatments including epilepsy surgery and neuromodulation, including electrical stimulation of the thalamus and cortex. He has published on diverse topics including clinical epilepsy, signal processing in human tissue recordings after epilepsy surgery, stimulation for treatment of epilepsy and recording from the thalamus to understand better how to stimulate the brain to reduce seizure frequency. He has an interest in the interface between medicine, biology, and the quantitative sciences including physics and engineering. In particular, understanding better the states and connectivity associated with seizure, and interventions aimed at improving epilepsy from a state-based and network-based perspective.