EPSCoR/IDeA Foundation

James W. Tracy has served as the vice president for research at the University of Kentucky since October 2007. He leads the university’s $300-million-a-year research enterprise and plays a vital role in UK’s mission to become one of America’s Top 20 public research institutions. Tracy oversees research proposal development, grants & contracts administration, federal relations, human subjects protection, nine non-degree-granting and multidisciplinary research centers, and an array of shared-use facilities that serve UK researchers. Interdisciplinary research at UK is sparked by the fact that it is one of the few universities in the country with colleges of agriculture, engineering, medicine, and pharmacy all located on a central campus.

Tracy earned a B.S. in chemistry and physics from Bowling Green State University (1972) and a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Purdue (1976). He did a seven-year stint as a research assistant professor in geographical medicine-studying drugs to treat tropical disease-at Case Western Reserve University before taking a position at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he became one of the founding members of the School of Veterinary Medicine. Tracy became a full professor at Wisconsin-Madison in 1990 and, 10 years later, associate dean for research in the university’s School of Veterinary Medicine, ranked in the Top 5 of 29 schools of veterinary medicine in North America.