Dr. Farrell received her B.S. in Physics from Brooklyn College, City University of New York and her doctorate in Physics from Carnegie Mellon University, where her thesis research focused on the synthesis and characterization of self-assembled arrays of magnetic nanoparticles. She then spent two years at University College London working on the preparation of nanoparticle-antibody conjugates for use in cancer therapy before returning to the U.S. to work at the Naval Research Laboratory developing biocompatible ligands for nanoparticle functionalization. She joined the National Cancer Institute in 2009 as a project manager in the Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer.