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President George W. Bush has named Arizona State University Professor of Geological
Sciences Laurie Leshin to the President’s Commission on the
Implementation of U.S. Space Exploration Policy, a commission that
he announced would be formed in a speech on January 14.
The President detailed an ambitious new mission for NASA and, according
to White House documents, “formed a Commission on the Implementation
of U.S. Space Exploration Policy to advise NASA on the long-term
implementation of the President's vision.” Leshin is the only
Arizonan appointed to the critically important nine-member commission,
and one of four scientists.
See the White House releases for further details: www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/01/print/20040130-7.html)
Dr. Laurie Leshin is the Dee and John Whiteman
Dean’s Distinguished Professor of Geological Sciences, and
the Director of the Center for Meteorites Studies at Arizona State
University. After attending Tempe public schools, she received her
B.S. in Chemistry at ASU, and her Ph.D. in 1994 from the California
Institute of Technology. Dr. Leshin is a cosmochemist primarily
interested in deciphering the record of water on objects in our
solar system – she has15 years experience performing quantitative
analyses of extraterrestrial rocks in the laboratory, and participating
in NASA flight projects. A primary part of her research involves
using meteorites from Mars to assess the history of water and the
potential for life on the red planet. Dr. Leshin plays a major role
in ASU’s Astrobiology Program where she works to understand
the formation of life’s precursor molecules on asteroids. She directs
research, education, and curation activities in the ASU Center for
Meteorite Studies, which houses the largest University-based meteorite
collection in the world. Dr. Leshin is also the leader of the Sample
Collection for Investigation of Mars (SCIM) mission, which was recently
a finalist for flight by NASA. If flown, SCIM could be the first
robotic round-trip mission to Mars, returning valuable dust and
atmosphere samples to Earth for analysis.
In 2003, Dr. Leshin was selected as the first Dean’s Distinguished
Professor in the ASU College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. In 1996,
she was the inaugural recipient of the Meteoritical Society’s
Nier Prize, awarded for outstanding research in meteoritics or planetary
science by a scientist under the age of 35. The International Astronomical
Union recognized her contributions to planetary science with the
naming of asteroid 4922 Leshin.
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