Meenakshi Wadhwa is the director of the Center for Meteorite Studies and a professor of geological sciences 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.
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, 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.
Wadhwa 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). She was awarded the Nier Prize in 2000.