Tracy Ann Fanara

Born: Unknown

Country of Birth: USA

Nationality: USA

Ethnicity: White

University of Florida BS, ME & PhD (2015) all in Environmental/Civil Engineering

""There is no stereotype to being smart, science is cool, and anyone can be a scientist or an engineer with some passion and hard work." (imdb.com); "I hope that my successes will show everyone, especially women, that they can excel in science, and that my journey will show that the path to every dream will come with obstacles, closed doors, and people that will tell you "no", but those obstacles are just challenges, there's some C4 for every closed door, for every river to cross', a cardboard boat, for every doubter, an ejector seat, and every "no", an opportunity to rise above it and be one step closer to your goal. you can achieve any dream, just don't give up." (imdb.com); “It’s absolutely necessary that we look at Earth from space. That we understand how all of our Earth systems work together in order to answer the big questions, especially in a changing world.” (spacefoundation.org); "The ultimate goal is use aquaponics for wastewater treatment. To have a completely sustainable system. You know, you poop, you pee, it goes through the primary treatment. Secondary treatment is aquaponics tertiary treatment. Then you drink the water. A lot of people that kind of grosses them out, but, but that’s, what’s really happening in our environment." (spacefoundation.org); "

— Tracy Ann Fanara

Field of Study: Environmental Engineer; Research Scientist

Institution/Corporation: NOAA; University of Florida; Mote Marine Laboratory

Degrees & Memberships: None found

Awards: None found

Achievements: investigates natural and man-made impacts to the environment and human health, communicates those impacts to the public and stakeholders, and develops design strategies and methodologies to alleviate those impacts; spent almost a decade designing water systems around the world focused on water quality through storm chasing and sustainable design and habitat restoration; 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; 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; has researched the use of aquaponics for space missions for NASA; is an expert on Florida's red tide blooms: worked with NOAA & NASA to develop HABScope a cell phone microscope where citizens can take a sample of water, put it under the microscope & upload a 30-second video into an app that has an algorithm that automatically calculates the concentration of red tide by shape, size & movement; worked with Virginia Tech to develop a beach conditions reporting system available at visitbeaches.org;