Dr. Richards-Kortum is Stanley C. Moore Professor and chair of the bioengineering department at Rice University. Previously, at the University of Texas at Austin, she was a professor of biomedical engineering and held the Cockrell Family Chair in Engineering No. 10. After receiving a B.S. in physics and mathematics from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, she received an M.S. degree in physics and a Ph.D. in medical physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

She has received several awards, including the National Science Foundation (NSF) Presidential Young Investigator; the NSF Presidential Faculty Fellow; the Becton Dickinson Career Achievement Award from the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation; the Outstanding Engineering Teaching by an Assistant Professor Award, College of Engineering, University of Texas at Austin; and the Y. C. Fung Young Investigator Award, Bioengineering Division, American Society of Mechanical Engineers. In 2001, she was elected to the Academy of Distinguished Teachers at the University of Texas at Austin and, in 2002, she received the Chancellor's Council Outstanding Teaching Award. In 2004, she received the Sharon Keillor Award for Women in Engineering from the American Society for Engineering Education and was named a Piper Professor by the Minnie Stevens Piper Foundation. In 2007, she was elected to the National Academy of Engineering. She currently serves on the National Advisory Council for Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering for the National Institutes of Health and directs the Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training Grant in Optical Biomolecular Engineering funded by the NSF.