Rebecca Ferrell
“The PhD program in Anthropology provided me with excellent research experiences and a breadth and depth of knowledge that has served me well in my own research and in my role as an NSF program director.” Dr. Rebecca Ferrell earned her PhD from Penn State University in 2003. Upon receiving her doctorate, she was appointed Postdoctoral Fellow in the Center for Population and Health at Georgetown University. Following her fellowship at Georgetown, Rebecca became an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Howard University. In 2009, she joined the National Institutes of Health as a Scientific Review Officer at the National Institute on Aging, and in 2014, she became the Program Director in Biological Anthropology at the National Science Foundation. She manages a portfolio of faculty and PhD dissertation research grants spanning the subdisciplines of biological anthropology, and in some cases bridging to other disciplines including archaeology, cultural anthropology, psychology, and evolutionary biology. In addition to her position at the NSF, Rebecca is a Research Associate at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. Her research has focused on dental anthropology, paleodemography, and reproductive aging.
