Rich Ross
Biography

Rich Ross and Scott Meltzer formed Monkey Wrench - The Comedy Explosion in 1991 and for the next 5 years they travelled the country performing at country fairs during the day and comedy clubs each night. Rich says he’s most proud of the time they performed at both Disneyland and Folsom State Prison on the same day.

Rich has been a Main Stage Company member of San Francisco’s treasured BATS Improv. He is a founding member of Start Trekkin’, an improv troupe parodying the original Star Trek universe, and an actor with the award winning improv group True Fiction Magazine.

Rich has always loved the marine sciences. He’s consulted on coral farms in the South Pacific and was the first to close the lifecycle on the dwarf cuttlefish (Sepia bandensis).

Now, when not on the road with Comedy Industries, Rich works as a biologist at the Steinhart Aquarium in the California Academy of Sciences. Most recently, he co-authored a paper on a previously unknown relationship between a new species of Jawfish and the Mimic Octopus.

In the aquarium world, Rich is also an avid writer, presenter and underwater photographer/videographer, exploring the world with his wife and daughter as collected on the Packed Head website.