Our Executive Mentors

Meenakshi "Mini" Wadhwa, PHD

Meenakshi (Mini) Wadhwa is a planetary scientist and educator interested in the time scales and processes involved in the formation and evolution of the Solar System and planets. She received her doctorate from Washington University in St. Louis and was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California at San Diego. She was subsequently Curator in the Department of Geology at the Field Museum in Chicago before moving to Arizona State University (ASU) as a Professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration in 2006. At ASU, she served as director of the Center for Meteorite Studies from 2006 to 2019. In July of 2019, she was appointed as director of the School of Earth and Space Exploration. She additionally holds an appointment as Distinguished Visiting Scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA and serves as the Mars Sample Return Principal Scientist.

She has served on numerous advisory committees for NASA and the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine. She was President of the Meteoritical Society in 2019-2020 and chaired the Science Committee of the NASA Advisory Council from 2018 to 2022. She is a recipient of the Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Award (2015), the Guggenheim Fellowship (2005), and the Nier Prize of the Meteoritical Society (2000). She was awarded an American Council on Education Fellowship (2018-2019) and became a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union in 2019. She became a Geochemistry Fellow of the Geochemical Society and the European Association of Geochemistry and was awarded the J. Lawrence Smith Medal of the National Academy of Sciences in 2021. She was elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2023. Asteroid 8356 has been named 8356 Wadhwa in recognition of her contributions to meteoritics and planetary science.