Emeritus Professor Ferry is a Regents' Professor in the School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering at Arizona State University, where he served 35 years. He received his doctorate at the University of Texas, Austin in electrical engineering. Thereafter, he was a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow in Vienna, Austria, 1966-67. From 1967 to 1973, he was a faculty member with Texas Tech University, and joined the Office of Naval Research. From 1977 to 1983, he was with Colorado State University, Fort Collins, where he served as professor and chair of the department. He joined Arizona State University, Tempe, where he was director of the Center for Solid State Electronics Research from 1983 to 1989, chair of Electrical Engineering from 1989 to 1992, and associate dean for research from 1993 to 1995. Ferry received the IEEE Cledo Brunetti Award for advances in nanoelectronics in 1999. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society, the Institute of Physics, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

Ferry has authored or co-authored more than 800 research papers, written or co-written 10 textbooks, 32 chapters in science books and 16 other books he describes as “quasi-scientific” (including “50 Years in the Semiconductor Underground” and the soon-to-be-published “The Copenhagen Conspiracy”). Collectively those writings have spanned a broad range of the many facets of electrical engineering, electronics and related physics and mathematics.

A gift to ASU from Ferry and his wife will now fund the new David and Darleen Ferry Professorship to support the research of a faculty member in the School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering, one of the Fulton Schools.