Hollingham came to Penn State in 2022 for a six-month independent research project in architectural engineering while working toward his master’s degree at the University of Glasgow. As a visiting scholar, he was impressed with the easy access to Penn State’s facilities, faculty, and academic opportunities. “Entirely just [by] emailing people, I got to do experiments in the nuclear reactor on campus for free. And I was like, well, I’m not doing that in the U.K.,” he says. “I don’t know what it is like in the rest of the U.S., but people are really willing to help here, in a way that I haven’t found in Europe.”

He returned to Scotland with a plan to come back. “I kind of knew in my head that wherever I did this master’s project, I’d probably do a Ph.D. there. So I came back [to Glasgow], and I was like, ‘Hey, Lovisa, there’s this place called Penn State, and it’s amazing. We should go there.’” 

Lovisa Arnesson-Cronhamre, Hollingham’s girlfriend of almost two years, was finishing her master’s in physics at the University of Glasgow, where the two had met. They’d bonded over their shared loves of science and sport: Arnesson-Cronhamre was an elite powerlifter—she could deadlift 319 pounds, which was 2.4 times her body weight. “She’s actually pound for pound stronger than me,” says Hollingham, who’d been on the university’s water polo team and had dabbled in endurance events—he’d hiked 450 miles from Glasgow to London in 17 days and had walked the width of northern England along Hadrian’s Wall in just 36 hours. 

Arnesson-Cronhamre, a native of Örebro, Sweden, was eager to pursue a doctorate as well, and she was up for the adventure and challenge of relocating to America. The two landed in University Park in August 2023, rented an unfurnished apartment, and settled into a brand-new life. “It was tough,” Hollingham says of the transition. “New job, new classes, homework, new country, new everything, it’s stressful. It was overwhelming for us.”

Exercise was familiar and grounding. On Sept. 12, Arnesson-Cronhamre went out for a jog, following a picturesque route Hollingham gave her that would take her around campus and past the Arboretum, which the two had already come to love. An hour went by, then two. Hollingham, worried about Arnesson-Cronhamre’s blood sugar level related to her Type 1 diabetes, used the Find My iPhone app to locate her. The app showed her to be along Park Avenue near North Halls, so he threw some apple juice in a backpack and ran from their downtown apartment to find her.

Instead, he found a swarm of police cars and people gathered at that spot. A speeding driver had lost control of his vehicle, crossed through oncoming traffic, jumped the curb, and hit a runner on the sidewalk. She’d been taken to Mount Nittany Medical Center but was being airlifted to a trauma center in Altoona. Hollingham scrambled to find a friend with a car who could take him there. “I was like, worst-case, she’ll be in a wheelchair,” he says. “That was my worst, worst, worst-case.”

When he arrived in Altoona, the hospital’s chaplain led him to Arnesson-Cronhamre. All he could do was hold her hand as she was pronounced dead. “I was broken,” he says. “Like absolutely broken.” 

Sue Hollingham was finishing up a weeklong vacation in rural Ireland with an old friend when her son called, distraught. “Lovisa’s been in an accident, they’re airlifting her to a hospital.” By the time he called back with the devastating news of her death, Sue had booked a flight from Dublin to New York and was on her way to him. “I felt really sorry for the person next to me on the plane, because I spent seven hours sobbing,” says Sue, who rented a car from the airport and arrived in State College the same day her son returned from Altoona. 

“That first night in my apartment without [Lovisa], I wasn’t alone, which was the most beautiful thing,” he says of his mother’s speedy arrival. His father soon joined them, and his parents stayed for a month, hosted by Hollingham’s academic adviser, Juan-Pablo Geuvadan—who had also been Arnesson-Cronhamre’s adviser. 

“Although it was a period of immense suffering for Matthew and torture as a parent, it was counteracted by unbelievable acts of generosity and kindness,” Sue says. The university connected Hollingham with Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS), while the couple’s families, already friends, worked together to make funeral arrangements and return Arnesson-Cronhamre’s belongings to Sweden while shielding him from such details. “[Lovisa] was absolutely lovely. Beautiful, quite shy, smart. They brought each other out and made each other better versions of themselves,” she says. “They were a lovely, lovely couple.”

Hollingham’s grief was all-encompassing. He’d not only lost his greatest love and best buddy—kompis in Swedish, which the two of them called each other—but his imagined future. Their plans for attaining their doctorates together, getting married, moving to Stockholm, having children, all of it had vanished. “When you ... lose it all so quickly, it really makes you reconsider everything. Like I remembered being here, thinking, Do I even want to do a Ph.D.? Do I want to be here? Why do I do this? All your premises are destroyed, and you kind of have to restart anew.”

It was brutal, yet ultimately clarifying. He continued with his studies, and with counseling. In March 2024, the driver of the vehicle pleaded guilty to one felony count of accidents involving death or personal injury and was sentenced to 33 days to 23.5 months in prison, followed by five years of probation. The deal was agreed to by Arnesson-Cronhamre’s family, to put that part of the nightmare behind them.

A few months later, Hollingham spent his summer break far from State College, traveling through Europe with a friend from the University of Glasgow. Their last adventure together had been the 70-mile walk along Hadrian’s Wall. This time, they flew to Florence, Italy, then took a train to the Italian cities of Bologna, Rimini, and Ancona before crossing the Adriatic Sea to meet up with more friends in Croatia. The trip ended in Munich, Germany, where they spent time with Hollingham’s roommate from Glasgow. 

Being with people who’d known Lovisa well was comforting, and the adventure of traveling stirred something inside him he hadn’t felt in ages. He was startled to hear his own laugh again. “That was genuinely one of the first times I was happy,” he says. “And in a weird way it made my mind be like, oh, life can still go on. There’s still more to experience and do.”

When he returned to campus at the end of that summer, Hollingham felt the approaching anniversary of her death, and he wanted it to be about Lovisa’s life. He wanted to honor her spirit, to give to the world in ways she no longer can while also living his own best life without her. 

On Sept. 14, 2024, Hollingham set out to raise money for Save the Children in Lovisa’s memory by continuously hiking up and down Mount Nittany 49 times, ultimately ascending 29,000 feet—the elevation of Mount Everest. His parents and her family were there to support his “Mt. Neverest” hike, along with friends and community members. The challenge took 35.5 hours and raised almost $13,000. 

“I was incredibly proud of him, and the Swedes as well as us, we were all there for it,” Sue says. “It was life-affirming.” The same weekend, the Arnesson-Cronhamre family announced the establishment of the Be More Lovisa Graduate Student Scholarship in Physics in the Eberly College of Science.

It wasn’t long after Mt. Neverest that Hollingham started dreaming up something bigger. Something way bigger. He pored over the possibilities on Google Maps, measuring distances and considering just how far he could push against his physical limits. He wanted to dig deeper, try harder, and love more. “I knew I could do something really far, or really weird and technical and unconventional,” he says. 

The adventurous route he landed on touches nine countries over two months. If accomplished, he will earn the Guinness World Record for the world’s farthest A to B Ironman Triathlon. It’ll start May 31 with a 2.36-mile swim in a lake above the Arctic Circle in Swedish Lapland; the water temperature is expected to be around 5 degrees Celsius. June 1 will be the first of 37 consecutive days of running a full marathon, and then July 8 he’ll transition to the bike to spend 23 back-to-back days cycling just over 110 miles a day, accompanied by a friend who has experience cycling long distances. 

The trek is scheduled to end on July 30, when his cycling route will include a 30-minute ferry ride from Gibraltar to Tangier, Morocco, during which he plans to cycle in circles on the boat to make up the distance being covered on the water. There are no down days in his itinerary, no wiggle room built in for weather delays, exhaustion, injury, or logistical snafus. 

“In some ways it doesn’t surprise me, but at the same time I’m equal parts astonished and horrified at the sheer audacity and heights that he’s prepared to go through for this one,” says his mother. 

It is exactly that audacity that Hollingham is hoping will help him reach his monetary goal. “I think you’ve got to do something sufficiently stupid [so] that you grab people’s attention,” he says with a smile. He’s supporting children’s charities as an homage to Lovisa’s extraordinarily kind nature, and because the couple planned to have kids one day. She had three siblings, but Hollingham, an only child, found that volunteering with children wasn’t exactly his strong suit: He signed up for the Big Brothers, Big Sisters program, but he only lasted one day. “I was just pretty useless; it was not my forte.” In Centre County, that program is run through the Youth Service Bureau, so he’s excited to give to the effort in a way that’s better suited to his talents. 

Months before the endeavor, the community was stepping up to support it. Happy Valley Adventure Bureau became his first sponsor, kicking in $15,000. Dave Gerdes, vice president of sales and product development for the Centre County tourism marketing organization, says Hollingham’s Ironman-esque challenge aligns perfectly with HVAB’s role as host of the annual Happy Valley Ironman competition, as well as its current marketing goal of attracting more international travelers to the area. Part of HVAB’s contribution will be used to fund the documentation of the adventure for the Centre Film Festival, for a project to be directed by Penn State Laureate Pearl Gluck.

For that, he’ll need footage. Lots and lots of footage, and he’s brought on friend and fellow Penn State grad student Jack Hughes for the filming and much more. Hughes, a Ph.D. candidate in energy and mineral engineering from Lubbock, Texas, will also serve as Hollingham’s social media manager, logistics coordinator, driver, and—arguably most importantly—mood stabilizer. “I think he brought me on because he knew that I could make him laugh and be a good and supportive friend throughout this,” says Hughes, who has considerable experience piloting a drone and speaks fluent Spanish, which will come in handy during the latter part of the challenge. 

The two friends, both studying different avenues of geologic carbon sequestration to mitigate climate change, are in the same lab group and have the same academic adviser. “We have really good working chemistry,” Hughes says. They also both have looming responsibilities related to their respective Ph.D. programs. Hollingham took his comprehensive exam in December, and he is conducting interviews and research this spring for the dissertation on construction barriers to carbon capture policy, which he will defend this fall. Hughes is hoping to spend some of his down time in Europe, while his friend is running and cycling, to work on the paper he must get published as the next step toward his doctorate.

The duo also aims to spend a month this spring sharpening their videography skills and social media plan. “I’m so excited,” Hughes says. “There’s a lot of opportunity to do so much good.”

Training to film the thing is, of course, secondary to training to do the thing. Starting last fall, Hollingham’s weekly workout routine included about 45 miles of running, 60 miles of biking, and almost 2 miles of swimming, and those distances—plus three weekly strength and conditioning sessions—were to increase as the event drew closer. Over winter break, he waded into the frigid North Sea off the coast of Felixtowe in Suffolk, England, for some cold-water swim training with several swimmers from the Felixstowe Swimscapes Open Water Swimming group. After his first 30-minute session in 6.9-degree Celsius water, his Garmin had died from the cold, but his spirits were high, even after he learned about the intricacies and pitfalls of rewarming after an ice swim. “Apparently, if you shower directly after ice-cold exposure, you die,” he says. “Other than that, it was a lovely experience.” 

He’s also working with dietician Kelly Hoffheins ’03 H&HD through Penn State Student Affairs’ Health Promotion and Wellness, a free service for students, to make sure his nutrition matches the demands of what he’s about to take on. “It’s always fun to help somebody along in this process when they’re looking at a big goal,” says Hoffheins, who has helped Hollingham increase his caloric intake through carbohydrate-rich snacks and tweak how he fuels his body during hourslong workouts. 

All that training aside, Hollingham knows that physical fitness will take him only so far. 

“I am pretty mentally resilient, and a lot of these [endurance] things are—it’s not about how fit are you. It’s about how long can you ignore knee pain, essentially, or how long can you just tune out of your feet throbbing,” he says. “I’ll try as much as possible with the training, but you’ve really just got to do it.”

He’ll get a hefty mental and emotional boost from family and friends along the way. His father, Richard Hollingham, who climbed Mount Nittany 16 times to carry supplies and support his son’s Mt. Neverest hike, has taken a small-boat course so he’s qualified to be in the vessel trailing Matthew through the frigid Lake Vuoggatjålmjaure in the Arctic Circle. His parents will also cheer him on at various points along the way, as will Hollingham’s friends, his current girlfriend, and, of course, the Arnesson-Cronhamre family.

He’ll see Lovisa’s sister Linnea, a nurse, for the swim, and Lovisa’s best friend as he runs through northern France. He’ll stay with her parents for a night as he jogs through her hometown of Örebro, which he says will be “a massive relief, seeing familiar people, and great food, a comfy bed. That’ll be lovely.” The families have remained close—Hollingham and his parents flew to Spain last year to celebrate Lovisa’s mother’s 50th birthday. 

His biggest boost will come from the fundraiser itself, as it gives him repeated opportunities to speak her name and spread her love. “This, to me, represents the adventure at the core of the human condition—perseverance through the storm—and no one represented that better than Lovisa,” he says. “She was the kindest, sweetest, most devastatingly determined and brilliant person I have ever had the privilege to love and be loved by. She is no longer here to provide her own love, and so it falls upon us, the living, to keep it going.”  

To follow Hollingham’s journey and donate to the fundraiser, visit happyvalley.com.