Born and raised in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Dr. Richter received a B.A. in Biological Sciences from Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He then moved to California to earn his doctoral degree in Biological Sciences from the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UC, Irvine. The focus of his doctoral dissertation research was reproduction, albeit of non-human organisms, namely the chaparral yucca plant whose enormous spring blooms conspicuously tower over the surrounding southern California shrubland vegetation, and the plant’s only pollinator, the mutually dependent California yucca moth.
Dr. Richter entered the field of human reproductive medicine in 1998 when he joined the Fertility Center of Las Vegas as a research scientist to work with innovative founder Dr. Bruce Shapiro. Before the advent of commercially available blastocyst culture media, Dr. Shapiro was already pioneering exclusive blastocyst-stage embryo transfer for his in vitro fertilization patients, with great success. Drs. Richter and Shapiro presented abstracts at every annual meeting of the American Society of Reproductive Medicine and the Pacific Coast Reproductive Society through spring of 2003. Together they published many of the earliest reports of successful large-scale clinical use of extended in vitro culture of embryos beyond the cleavage stage for blastocyst-stage transfer.
In 2003, Dr. Richter moved to Maryland to join Shady Grove Fertility. As their only scientist and biostatistician, he led the growth of the SGF research program from marginal participation to being among the nation’s top contributors to the scientific discussion of human infertility and its treatment. In 2019, Dr. Richter left Shady Grove Fertility to found Fertility Science Consulting, in order to enhance and expand the availability of much-needed scientific expertise to a broader clientele of clinical researchers of reproductive medicine.