Sergio Ferrara was born in Rome, Italy, on 2 May 1945; he graduated from the University of Rome in 1968. Since then he worked as a CNEN and INFN researcher at the Frascati National Laboratories; as a CNRS visiting scientist at the Laboratoire de Physique Théorique, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, and at the Theoretical Studies Division at CERN, Geneva.
In 1980, he won a competition for a full professorship of theoretical physics in Italy.
In 1981, he joined as a staff member the Theory Division at CERN.
In 1985 he became a professor of physics at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Since 1986, he has been a senior staff member of the Physics Department at CERN.
In the fall 2008, he was Visiting Miller Professor at the Berkeley Center for Theoretical Physics, University of California, Berkeley.
In 2008 he was awarded an ERC Advanced Investigator Grant (SUPERFIELDS) by the European Research Council.
He is an INFN scientific research associate at the Frascati National Laboratories since 1993.
He has served on the INFN Council (Italy) from 1983 to 1989 (as representative of the Ministry of Industry), on the NATO Scientific Committee from 1996 to 2000 (as representative of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs), and is currently a member of the Administrative Council of the Enrico Fermi Centre in Rome, Italy (as representative of the Ministry of Arts and Culture).
He has written over 300 publications in peer reviewed journals, with an overall number of more than 23000 citations.
Sergio Ferrara has edited several books and many conference proceedings.
He is a referee for the main international scientific journals, such as Physical Review, Physical Review Letters, Nuclear Physics.
He has been associate editor of the International Journal: ATMP (Advances in Mathematical and Theoretical Physics, Editors in chief: A. Ashtekar, E. Lieb, S-T.Yau, B. Zweibach).
He has been a referee for the Nobel Committee of Physics from 1988 to 2000.

Sergio Ferrara received the "Prix Scientifique UAP" in Paris in 1991 and he was awarded the "Dirac Medal and Prize" of ICTP, Trieste (IAEA, UNESCO) in 1993 for the formulation of supergravity.
In 2005, he received an "honorary degree" in physics from the University of Rome "Tor Vergata" and shared the 2005 "Enrico Fermi Prize" of the Italian Physical Society with G. Veneziano and B. Zumino.
He has received the 2006 "Dannie Heineman prize for Mathematical Physics" of the American Physical Society, together with D. Freedman (MIT) and P. van Nieuwenhuizen (Stony Brook) for the discovery of supergravity and its subsequent developments.
Awardee of the 2008 "Amaldi Medal", the European prize for gravitational physics, presented by the Italian Society for General Relativity and Gravitation (SIGRAV), especially for his studies on extremal black holes and the discovery of the attractor mechanism.
In February 2008 he has been awarded a "Gold Medal as Avogadro Lecturer" from Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Rome, Italy.
He is a recipient of a "Visiting Miller Research Professorship Award" for 2008, bestowed by the Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science, Berkeley (CA), USA.
In 2009 he was nominated by the President of Italian Republic "Commendatore Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana"