Wadhwa’s selection follows a national search for an innovative and acclaimed scientist and administrator to lead UC San Diego’s renowned ocean, Earth, and atmospheric sciences research and education programs at Scripps Oceanography. With an annual operating budget of $304 million and a fleet of four academic research vessels, Scripps leads research in climate change impacts and adaptation, resilience to hazards, conservation and biodiversity, oceans and human health, national security, and developing innovative technology to observe the planet. Scripps education programs include graduate education serving 350 doctoral and master’s students, as well as seven undergraduate majors that serve nearly 900 students and teach courses to more than 7,000 UC San Diego students.
“We are delighted to welcome Meenakshi Wadhwa back to UC San Diego as Vice Chancellor for Marine Sciences, Dean of the School of Marine, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, and Director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography,” said Chancellor Pradeep K. Khosla. “Wadhwa’s outstanding leadership and interdisciplinary research experience make her uniquely qualified to tackle pressing global challenges, including climate change mitigation and planetary exploration. With her expertise and vision, she is positioned to lead and support multidisciplinary collaborations across campus that will create exciting new research programs, enhancing UC San Diego’s position as a destination public research university. I am confident Wadhwa will build on Scripps’ legacy of innovation and excellence.”
Wadhwa has served as director of the School of Earth and Space Exploration (SESE) at Arizona State University (ASU) for the last six years, overseeing an active research program, as well as graduate and undergraduate educational programs in geosciences, biogeosciences, astrobiology, oceanography, planetary sciences, astronomy, astrophysics, cosmology, engineering for exploration, and science education.
Since 2021, Wadhwa has also served as NASA’s Principal Scientist for the Mars Sample Return (MSR) Program, a collaboration between NASA and the European Space Agency to bring samples of Mars to Earth for the first time, comprising multiple projects at NASA centers including the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Goddard Space Flight Center and Marshall Space Flight Center. In this role, she has been responsible for the scientific success of the program and coordination and communication with scientists, engineers, and leadership, as well as the broader science community.
Her selection as the 12th director of Scripps represents a homecoming for Wadhwa, who worked as a postdoctoral scholar at the institution early in her career alongside the late Günter W. Lugmair, a pioneer in isotope geochemistry. She also worked in a Lugmair’s lab for several years while concurrently working as a curator for geological collections at the Field Museum in Chicago.
“Scripps Institution of Oceanography’s mission to understand and protect our planet deeply resonates with me,” said Wadhwa, who will also hold the Charles F. Kennel Director’s Endowed Chair at UC San Diego. “The complex environmental challenges we face today cannot be addressed by any single scientific discipline or approach. The interdisciplinary opportunities at UC San Diego, combined with Scripps’ 122-year legacy of research excellence across ocean, Earth, and atmospheric sciences, uniquely position the institution to assemble the collaborative teams needed to tackle some of humanity’s most pressing challenges.”
Wadhwa will replace Margaret Leinen, who has served as Vice Chancellor, Director and Dean since 2013, and who had announced she was stepping down from the role last summer. Leinen, who made history as the first woman to lead Scripps, will continue in the role until Wadhwa arrives in San Diego.
“My time at Scripps was hugely influential in setting the trajectory for my career,” said Wadhwa. “I attribute a lot of the successes I’ve had to the early training and mentorship that I received from faculty and colleagues there. I’m thrilled and honored to return and lead Scripps into its next chapter of research and educational excellence.”
Wadhwa is an accomplished scientist and professor. The Isotope Cosmochemistry and Geochronology Laboratory she leads at ASU is known for developing novel methodologies for high-precision isotope analyses to understand the time scales and processes involved in the formation of the solar system and planets. From 2006 to 2019, prior to serving as director of SESE, she served as the director for the Center for Meteorite Studies at ASU, which included management of the world’s largest university-based collection of meteorites. Prior to joining ASU, she spent 11 years as Curator at the Field Museum.
From 2018–2022, she chaired the Science Committee of the NASA Advisory Council, which advises NASA leadership on a broad spectrum of Earth and space sciences, including astrophysics, planetary science, Earth observation from space, as well as remote sensing and monitoring of climate change indicators and hazards. For her service in this role, she was awarded the NASA Exceptional Public Service Medal. She spent five years as a member of the National Academies Space Studies Board, in which leaders from academia and industry provide an independent, authoritative forum for advice to the nation on all aspects of space science. Wadhwa has also taken part in expeditions of the Antarctic Search for Meteorites Program, for which she received the Antarctica Service Medal.
She is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and a recipient of the J. Lawrence Smith Medal of the National Academy of Sciences, the Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Award, the Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Nier Prize of the Meteoritical Society. She is also a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and the Meteoritical Society, as well as a Geochemistry Fellow of the Geochemical Society and the European Association of Geochemistry.
She received her doctorate in earth and planetary sciences from Washington University in St. Louis, and her master’s and bachelor’s degrees in geology from Panjab University in Chandigarh, India.
With her decades of experience as a planetary scientist, Wadhwa said she is eager to bring her leadership perspective to UC San Diego, where there are unique opportunities for collaboration across scientific fields.
“From a planetary perspective, I appreciate the immense interconnectivity between the solid Earth, oceans, atmosphere, and space, particularly when it comes to the human impacts on these realms. As we face an era of unprecedented change for our planet, I’m excited to build on Scripps’ legacy of scientific leadership while preparing the next generation with the cross-disciplinary skills and technology-driven approaches essential for understanding and protecting our interconnected Earth system.”
