Dr. Tracy Fanara is an engineer, research scientist, professor, and public speaker with a BS, ME, and PhD from the University of Florida. Tracy spent almost a decade designing water projects all over the world in addition to her work in research and development. While at UF, Tracy stormchased Florida weather events as part of her research in hydrologic restoration, she mentored and was the design engineer on 2 nationally winning EPA design competitions; was selected as a Presidential Management Fellow by the US Federal Government, and was a National Science Foundation SPICE fellow. Tracy now manages a research program at Mote Marine Laboratory where she designs and develops technology, tools and programs to protect wildlife and water quality. Her diverse program includes Florida red tide and harmful algae research, water treatment design, biofiltration, hydrologic modeling, and sustainable design. She is now working on designing an aquaponics system for space travel, and was on the development team for HABscope (a NASA funded, NOAA and GCOOS led, citizen science project for Florida red tide detection). At Mote, Tracy developed a website and three apps for publicly available environmental data reporting with over 1.5 million users. In 2018, Florida was under a state of emergency in response to an intense dual algal bloom, in which Tracy was called upon to speak on many media platforms as mass wildlife fatalities filled shorelines and economy, recreation, quality of life, and public health were threatened by dual harmful algal blooms. Tracy spends time outside of work on communicating science to the next generation. Tracy was featured in Marvel’s Unstoppable Wasp and co-created the comic book, Seekers of Science. You may have seen Tracy on Science Channel’s, “MythBusters: The Search” and “What on Earth”, Fox’s Awesome Planet, CBS’s Mission Unstoppable, Weather Channel’s “The Scariest Stuff on Earth” or ABC’s Animal Outtakes. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/liana-zavo/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/liana-zavo/support