{"id":52573,"date":"2026-09-15T06:15:32","date_gmt":"2026-09-15T11:15:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nelson.wisc.edu\/the-commons\/?p=52573"},"modified":"2026-09-15T10:14:57","modified_gmt":"2026-09-15T15:14:57","slug":"what-is-science-for-holly-gibbs-alumni-profile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nelson.wisc.edu\/the-commons\/what-is-science-for-holly-gibbs-alumni-profile\/","title":{"rendered":"What Is Science For?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For five days and six nights this summer, Holly Gibbs PhD\u201908 went off the grid. She\u2019s one of the world\u2019s most highly cited researchers, but during her annual backpacking trip with her husband, and their three school-age sons, she was an adventurer, a naturalist, a mother. This year, they hiked 50 miles through Wyoming\u2019s Wind River Range.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She may trek the American wilderness, but Gibbs is a leading scholar on the Brazilian Amazon. She\u2019s a professor and researcher in the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, where she also earned her PhD. But her academic path started quite differently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Each summer, Holly Gibbs PhD\u201908, her husband, Benji, and their sons Wyatt, Finnegan, and Levi explore a new stretch of the United States wilderness. Photos and map courtesy of Holly Gibbs (5)<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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As a kid, Gibbs was set on becoming a veterinarian. She shadowed at clinics, had her own cat adoption center, and attended The Ohio State University on an undergraduate pre-vet track. But all that changed in a natural resources class, where she learned how clearing tropical forests to grow food can ultimately reduce rainfall and productivity across entire regions.  She was struck by the unintended consequences of deforestation for food production and the sustainability of entire rainforest basins. \u201cI realized that environmental problems weren\u2019t isolated \u2014 they were connected to the way people use land and produce food,\u201d she remembers. \u201cI knew that I wanted to understand the bigger systems behind these problems and help both people and forests.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Make change<\/em> became a guiding principle of Gibbs\u2019 career. She continued at Ohio State after undergrad, earning her master\u2019s in environmental science and then worked as a remote sensing researcher at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. While exploring doctoral programs, she sought an experience that would pair rigorous research with on-the-ground impact. She found it at the Nelson Institute working with Jon Foley \u201990, PhD\u201993<\/a>, the institute\u2019s inaugural Gaylord Nelson Distinguished Chair in Integrated Environmental Studies \u2014 a position which Gibbs now holds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For her PhD, she explored the interaction between tropical deforestation, climate change, and food systems at the global scale. She fine-tuned her expertise in GIS and spatial analysis, while learning to integrate human behavior and social systems into environmental models. \u201cThe environment and resources graduate program gave me the opportunity to focus deeply on a specific environmental problem while developing the interdisciplinary research skills and methodologies to address it,\u201d Gibbs says. Just as importantly, she developed communication and engagement skills that allowed her to connect scientific research with policy across disciplines and perspectives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n