Lara Ferry, Ph.D.

Education:

• B.S., Biology, Cal Poly State University-San Luis Obispo
• M.S., Marine Science, San Francisco State University
• Ph.D., Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Irvine
• Postdoctoral Associate, Center for Population Biology and Department of Evolution and Ecology, University of California-Davis

Background:

Lara Ferry is the inaugural Vice President and Chief Research Innovation Officer and a Professor of Biology at OU. She joined the University of Oklahoma in 2026, tasked with leveraging her prior experiences to bring commercialization, strategic engagement, partnerships, and venture development together under one leader so that discoveries at OU move faster into real-world use, delivering economic impact across Oklahoma. She collaborates closely with faculty and academic units to advance research initiatives in alignment with the university’s research goals, and to enhance the university’s research impact through the delivery of meaningful outcomes to our region and our nation.

Prior to serving at OU, Lara was at Arizona State University for 16+ years, most recently as the Vice President for Research. She has served in leadership roles on both the academic and research sides of the house, working to deliver on the promise of the state university in meeting the needs of the community and the region.

Dr. Ferry is broadly trained as a comparative physiologist and ecophysiologist, and her research has focused largely on aquatic and marine organisms. This research is centered on questions relating to the evolution of jaws and their function in the aquatic realm, as well as the performance of skeletal materials such as cartilage.

Fields of Specialization: Biology, Marine Science, Ecology, Physiology, Ecophysiology, Biomechanics, Biomaterials