She received a B.S. in Environmental Sciences from the University of Massachusetts in 1981 and a Ph.D.in Genetics from the University of Washington in 1990. As a postdoctoral fellow, she was recipient of a Life Sciences Research Foundation Award, and studied cell-cell signaling both in the Dept. of Developmental Biology at Stanford University and in the Institute of Molecular Biology at the University of Oregon. She is an Associate Professor in the Molecular and Medical Genetics Department at OHSU, joined the Center in 2003, and became the Director of the Primate Genetics Program in 2008. Dr. Ferguson also holds an appointment as a Research Scientist at the Washington National Primate Research Center in Seattle, Washington.