Apr 6, 2024
Dr. Tracy Fanara is on a mission to extend humanity’s time on
earth through investigation, engineering and education. She an
environmental engineer and research scientist with a BS, ME, and
PhD from the University of Florida. Tracy spent almost a decade
designing water systems around the world, before and during her
research at UF, focused on water quality through stormchasing and
sustainable design and habitat restoration. Tracy was the design
engineer on two nationally winning EPA design teams, was a National
Science Foundation SPICE fellow, and was selected as a US
Presidential Management Fellow. Tracy has been recognized as an
inspirational women in STEM by The Weather Channel, Xylem YSI, The
Observer, The Gina Davis Foundation: If Then/She Can, Project
Inspire, The National Science Leaders of America, and many other
organizations, Universities and news outlets for her tireless work
in bringing science to the public.
Tracy is a scientist and program manager at the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) where she works to protect
humans and wildlife by collaborating with scientists and engineers
from all over the world to understand and forecast earth systems
from the bottom of the sea to the sun. Before joining NOAA, Tracy
managed the Environmental Health research program at Mote Marine
Laboratory where she was called on as an expert in the Florida
Water Crises, where The Weather Channel’s Jim Cantore called her,
"The face of red tide.” Her research projects are diverse from
developing citizen science programs, water treatment technology,
artificial marine habitats, aquaponics for space travel with NASA,
and redeveloped a website (visitbeaches.org), along with developing
three apps for publicly available environmental data reporting with
over 1.7 million users.
Tracy’s mission, Inspector Planet, answers the calls of the public
on environmental and wildlife hazards to solve and explain causes
and solutions. Tracy also spends time outside of work on
communicating environment and science (podcasts, classroom visits
and public speaking (250+ keynotes)), was recently Xylem YSI’s
Mission: Water Hero and was featured in Marvel’s Unstoppable Wasp
which led to her co-produced comic series, Seekers of Science. In
addition to hundreds of written and broadcasted news outlets and
Saturday morning educational television programming on Fox, CBS and
ABC, you may have seen her on The Weather Channel as an expert or
on the show Weird Earth or on the Science Channel’s Mythbusters and
What On Earth?