Ferrara is originally from
Genoa, and studied electrical engineering at the
University of Genoa, earning a laurea in 1987 and completing a Ph.D. in 1992. She became an assistant professor at the
University of Genoa in 1992, and moved to the
University of Pavia in 1998 as an associate professor. She was named professor of automatic control in 2005. At Pavia, she was originally affiliated with the department of computer engineering and systems science, and in 2011 became one of the founding members of a new department of electrical, computer, and biomedical engineering.[3]
^IEEE Fellows, IEEE Control Systems Society, retrieved 2020-11-23
^IFAC Fellows, International Federation of Automatic Control, retrieved 2022-08-15
^Cassandras, Christos G. (February 2019), "Review of Freeway Traffic Modelling and Control", IEEE Control Systems Magazine, 39 (1): 68–71,
doi:10.1109/mcs.2018.2876960