Ron Aryel, M.D., M.B.A.

Dr. Aryel is president of Duck Pond Investments, LLC, a real estate investment firm serving Washoe and Lyon counties’ residential markets. He is a pediatrician with experience in disaster medicine, medical informatics, and biosurveillance. He has served as a volunteer special advisor to Mayor Hillary Schieve. Dr. Aryel served on the City of Reno’s COVID-19 Task Force and Data Subcommittee, which advised the Mayor, the City Council, and, through the COVID Risk Meter and Predictive Tool, the residents of Washoe County about the pandemic and how residents could protect themselves.

Utilizing experience from both his medical career and previous work at Hughes Aircraft Company’s Space and Communications Group (today, Boeing Defense, Space and Security), Dr. Aryel was part of a core team that developed and deployed the COVID Risk Meter; he conceived of and codeveloped the Predictive Tool with Aditya Nair, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Nevada Reno. Beginning in September 2020, this unique tool provided a week’s accurate early warning of viral activity in the Truckee Meadows for nearly two years.

Dr. Aryel was a key subcontractor for Real-Time Outbreak Disease Surveillance (RODS), the United States’ first automatic biosurveillance, bioterrorism, and epidemic warning system (used in Washoe County and many states as well as certain foreign countries) and coedited the first textbook to describe the principles and practices of biosurveillance, HANDBOOK OF BIOSURVEILLANCE (Academic Press, 2006). President George W. Bush visited the RODS laboratory and modeled $300 million in public health spending after it.

In 2004, Dr. Aryel served as a lead subcontractor on a Mental Health Quality Management System project for the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. His role was to show the Mental Hygiene Division how to use Quality Improvement techniques borrowed from the automotive and aerospace industries, to apply its $825 million annual budget to improve patient outcomes, as opposed to merely ensuring that psychiatrists complied with contractual requirements.

From 1998 to 2001, Dr. Aryel seved in the National Disaster Medical System, deploying with Disaster Medical Assistance Teams. He was cited twice for outstanding service in the field.

In Reno, Dr. Aryel ran a pediatric practice in Reno for 11 years that won multiple awards for excellence in medical care and vaccinations, including an award from the CDC in 2019 for achieving the second highest HPV vaccination rate in the United States, a Distinguished Alumnus Award from Drexel University College of Medicine in 2018, and a tribute read into the Congressional Record by US Senator Dean Heller on April 21, 2016.

Dr. Aryel was honored by the City of Reno in 2021 with a Proclamation.

Dr. Aryel holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Communication Studies and a professional certificate in computer programming from UCLA, an M.D. from Drexel University, and an M.B.A. from the University of South Florida. He is a Life Member of the Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society.