Tracy grew up on an island off the coast of Vancouver in a town called Victoria B.C. Canada. There she completed her undergraduate studies in Chemistry at the University of Victoria, where she undertook research on Electrospray Mass Spectroscopy of permanently charged organo tin reagents under Prof. J. Scott McIndoe. She then crossed the Rocky mountains to undertake her doctoral studies at the University of Calgary under Prof. Warren E. Piers, where she synthesized, characterized, and mechanistically studied platinum diimine complexes for C-H and small molecule activation. After 5 years of organometallic chemistry, she made the move to the greater Chicago area to work as a post-doctoral fellow for Tobin J. Marks at Northwestern University. There, she primarily studied homo-hetero-tandem catalysis for biomass conversion. After 2 years as a post-doc, she joined the Faculty at Northwestern as a Research Assistant Professor. Her research interests include organometallic chemistry, heterogeneous catalysis, supported organometallics, olefin polymerization, atomic layer deposition (ALD) precursor design and synthesis, new Lewis acids, and hydroelementation with organolanthanide catalysts. She is an avid runner and when she is not in the gym, she enjoys spending time with her husband and 2 cats.
