Meenakshi Wadhwa will direct the La Jolla institution after Margaret Leinen stepped down June 30, starting Oct 1 and taking on other leadership roles.
Distinguished Earth and planetary scientist Meenakshi Wadhwa will join UC San Diego Oct 1 as the La Jolla institution’s Vice Chancellor for marine sciences and director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
Wadhwa will also be Dean of the School of Marine, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and hold the Charles F Kennel Director’s Endowed Chair.
A recognized leader with extensive experience in academic and research administration, Wadhwa becomes the second female director of SIO, after Margaret Leinen, who took on the role in 2013 and stepped down June 30.
Wadhwa’s selection as the 12th director of SIO is a bit of a homecoming, as she worked as a postdoctoral scholar at the institution early in her career.
UCSD selected Wadhwa following a national search.
“We are delighted to welcome Meenakshi Wadhwa back,” UCSD Chancellor Pradeep K Khosla said in a press release, noting Wadhwa’s “outstanding leadership and interdisciplinary research experience make her uniquely qualified to tackle pressing global challenges, including climate change mitigation and planetary exploration.”
Wadhwa has served as director of the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University for the last six years, overseeing an active research program and graduate and undergraduate educational programs.
Since 2021, Wadhwa has also served as NASA’s Principal Scientist for the Mars Sample Return Program, a collaboration between NASA and the European Space Agency to bring samples of Mars to Earth for the first time.
SIO’s mission to understand and protect the planet “deeply resonates” with Wadhwa, she said in a statement. “The interdisciplinary opportunities at [UCSD and] 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.”
