A renowned scientist whose interests range from the nature of Earth’s oceans to the composition of Mars has been named director of UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, one of the most respected centers of its kind in the world.
Meenakshi Wadhwa was recruited from Arizona State University, where she’s been serving as director of the School of Earth and Space Exploration. She will succeed Margaret Leinen, who is credited with enriching Scripps’ research programs, particularly in climate change, during her 12-year tenure.
Wadhwa is widely known for her role as NASA’s principal scientist for the Mars Sample Return Program, which proposes to collect samples from the surface of Mars and bring them to Earth — something that’s never been done.
She also has been praised for her efforts to find and recover meteorite specimens in Antarctica.
The appointment represents a homecoming for Wadhwa, who served as a postdoctoral researcher at Scripps in the mid-1990s.
The institute’s “mission to understand and protect our planet deeply resonates with me,” Wadhwa said in a statement. “The complex environmental challenges we face today cannot be addressed by any single scientific approach.”
She will assume her new position this fall.