Wisconsin Energy Institute affiliate Holly Gibbs is among five University of Wisconsin–Madison faculty members elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

Established in 1780 to recognize accomplished individuals and engage them in challenges facing the republic, the national honorary society and research center announced the 2026 inductees on Thursday, noting their contributions to their respective fields.

Gibbs is the Gaylord A. Nelson Distinguished Chair in Integrated Environmental Studies and professor in the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies.

As a geographer, she studies how and why people use land around the world and what these changes — particularly tropical deforestation in Brazil and cropland expansion and private property conservation in the United States — mean for the future of our planet. Her interdisciplinary team has pioneered approaches integrating big data, AI-based modeling, spatial analysis, remote sensing imagery and econometrics with ground-based information on social and biophysical conditions to understand land-use change.

Other UW–Madison inductees are educational theorist Michael W. Apple, chemist Helen E. Blackwell, communication researcher Dominique Brossard, and mathematician Jordan Ellenberg.

They join nearly 250 other newly elected members across academia, the arts, industry, policy, research and science.

“We celebrate the achievement of each new member and the collective breadth and depth of their excellence — this is a fitting commemoration of the nation’s 250th anniversary,” said Academy President Laurie Patton. “The founding of the nation and the Academy are rooted in the inextricable links between a vibrant democracy, the free pursuit of knowledge and the expansion of the public good.”