Michael Ferrara joined NSF as a permanent program officer after serving as a professor in the Department of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences at the University of Colorado Denver. His education research interests include understanding how outreach and peer teaching experiences impact undergraduate STEM majors and the mathematical and pedagogical preparation of K-12 teachers and graduate teaching assistants. He brings experiences as an informal and classroom educator, a research mathematician, and a mentor to teachers and learners in a breadth of settings to his work at NSF.