Meenakshi Wadhwa

Meenakshi Wadhwa is the director of the Center for Meteorite Studies and a professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration, both at Arizona State University. She is also a research associate at The Field Museum in Chicago.

Career

Meenakshi Wadhwa received her Ph.D. in Earth and Planetary Sciences in 1994 from Washington University in St. Louis (WashU). Her research is focused on the origin and evolution of the Solar System and planets through studies of meteorites, Moon rocks and other extraterrestrial samples returned by spacecraft missions. She has hunted for meteorites in Antarctica with the Antarctic Search for Meteorites (ANSMET) Program during two field seasons (2002-03 and 2012-13). As director of the Center for Meteorite Studies at Arizona State University, Wadhwa oversees the curation of one of the largest university-based meteorite collections,^[1] and a variety of research and educational activities. During her career, she served as a science team member on a number of NASA planetary science missions including Genesis and Mars Science Laboratory. She was PI of a proposal for Sample Collection for the Investigation of Mars (SCIM) to the NASA Discovery program in 2010.

Awards and honors

Wadhwa was recipient of the Fulbright-Nehru academic and professional excellence fellowship in 2015. She became a Fellow of The Explorers Club in 2012, The Wings WorldQuest in 2007 and of the Meteoritical Society in 2006. She received the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005. In 1999 she was awarded the asteroid name 8356 Wadhwa by the International Astronomical Union (IAU).^[2] She was awarded the Nier Prize in 2000.

References

External links

• Meenakshi Wadhwa’s Arizona State University School of Earth & Space Exploration webpage
• Meenakshi Wadhwa’s Arizona State University curriculum vitae
• ASU News Now: Space rocks Wadhwa’s world at meteorite center