Dr. John Farrell

Dr. John Farrell is the executive director of the US Arctic Research Commission, an independent federal agency of Presidential appointees that advises the White House and Congress on Arctic research and works with executive branch agencies to establish and execute a national Arctic research plan. He’s participated in three major oceanographic expeditions in the high Arctic, and served as a science fellow at US Embassy Berlin. In 2019 he received a Presidential Rank Award of Distinguished Executive. Farrell previously served as Associate Dean at the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography, and Director of the international Ocean Drilling Program which advanced scientific understanding of the Earth. He earned ScM and PhD degrees in geological sciences from Brown University, and a BA in geology from Franklin and Marshall College. He was an NSF-funded postdoctoral fellow at Brown, and an NSERC-funded senior research associate at the University of British Columbia.