UW’s Tracey Holloway elected to National Academy of Medicine

Tracey Holloway, atmospheric scientist and professor in the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, has been elected a member of the National Academy of Medicine in recognition of her leadership in initiatives to connect climate with health.

Holloway, the Jeff Rudd and Jeanne Bissell Professor of Energy Analysis and Policy, is among 100 new members announced this week. They were elected by the Academy’s current members in acknowledgment of major contributions to the advancement of the medical sciences, health care, and public health.

“This extraordinary class of new members is comprised of exceptional scholars and leaders who have been at the forefront of responding to serious public health challenges, combatting social inequities, and achieving innovative discoveries,” said National Academy of Medicine President Victor J. Dzau.  “Their expertise will be vital to informing the future of health and medicine for the benefit of us all.  I am truly honored to welcome these esteemed individuals to the National Academy of Medicine.”

At least one-quarter of NAM’s newly elected members are selected from fields outside the health professions —fields like law, engineering, social sciences and the humanities.

Holloway is representative of that diversity of talent, with more than 20 years of research at the intersection of air quality, energy, climate, and public health. Her laboratory uses information from satellites and ground sensors to model air quality and its effects on public health, and applies their models to understand the health benefits of changes in energy production and policy.

Since 2012, Holloway has held roles with NASA groups organizing researchers around that agency’s satellite data on atmospheric contaminants. In 2016, she became leader of NASA’s Health and Air Quality Applied Sciences Team, which helps public agencies make use of NASA’s wealth of air quality data to solve real-world public health problems.

Her work has been supported by the Environmental Protection Agency, NASA, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health, among others.

Holloway is also a co-founder and the first president of the Earth Science Women’s Network, which works to increasing diversity across the geosciences — where women and people of color are underrepresented among scientists — and started ESWN’s annual Science-A-Thon social media celebration. She is a Science Mom, and was the first-ever recipient of the MIT C3E (Clean Energy Education & Empowerment Awards) award in Education and Mentoring, a Stanford University Leopold Leadership Fellow, an American Association for the Advancement of Science Leshner Leadership Fellow, and was awarded the 2018 UW–Madison Undergraduate Research Student Mentoring Award.