Born in Los Angeles, Ronald A. Sherman, MD, MSC, DTM&H earned his BS in Entomology at UC Riverside, his MD at UCLA, and his Masters degree in Clinical Tropical Medicine at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He completed his Internal Medicine Residency at UC Davis in 1987 and his Infectious Diseases Fellowship at UC Irvine in 1991. Dr. Sherman started studying myiasis and maggot therapy as a medical student, published his first paper on the topic in 1983, and started the first prospective studies in 1990. After 4 years working for the Veterans Affairs Medical Center (Long Beach, CA) as an infectious diseases and geriatrics specialist, Dr. Sherman joined the faculty of UC Irvine in 1995, where he continued his research in myiasis, maggot therapy, and maggot biochemistry. Requests for Dr. Sherman’s medical grade maggots increased world-wide, and in 2003, the FDA started regulating medicinal maggots as a medical device. After FDA review, Dr. Sherman was granted marketing clearance for his Medical Maggots, but the laboratory had to separate from the University in order to uphold the high manufacturing standards required by FDA. Dr. Sherman left the University himself in 2008 to devote his time to overseeing the Medical Maggot laboratory (now known as Monarch Labs), and directing the non-profit BioTherapeutics, Education & Research (BTER) Foundation, whose mission is to support patient care, education, and research in maggot therapy, leech therapy, and the other biotherapeutic modalities. To minimize conflicts of interest, Dr. Sherman does not accept salary for his laboratory or clinical maggot therapy work. Instead, he supports his family by working part-time as an HIV / AIDS Specialist for the Orange County Health Care Agency.