ASU officially brought in alumna Laurie Leshin as the University professor for Space Futures on Jan. 1, further expanding the expertise within ASU's School of Earth and Space Exploration (SESE).
In the role, she will work closely with SESE while also advising leadership within the University on space research and development in higher education.
Leshin joins ASU after serving as the first female president of Worcester Polytechnic Institute from 2014-22, before then becoming the first woman to serve as director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory from 2022-25.
"Laurie is highly accomplished," said Maitrayee Bose, a professor and the associate director of community outreach for SESE. "Bringing in accomplished leaders like that … I think that is transformative. It sort of signals that ASU is committed to space research."
The University has already been involved in over 25 active space missions, but students like Om Biswal, a senior studying astrophysics, said Leshin's experience will only further boost ASU's success in current and future missions.
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However, along with Leshin's expertise, her arrival at the University also brings connections that some professors believe will be extremely valuable for the future of SESE.
"She brings a really great perspective and connections across the different communities that need to get involved," Rhonda Stroud, a professor at SESE, said. "The timing of her coming in is really fantastic, in trying to draw together the different communities we need."
Stroud noted that these expanding connections included branching into fields like business, law, anthropology and others, which all assist in the broad field of space futures development.
The benefits of growth in SESE apply not only to its research but to students studying within the school as well.
"The reason I chose SESE for my astrophysics degree is because of the availability of different professors we have," Biswal said. "You have a different spectrum of professors who are doing research in different areas to choose from when you want to learn or when you want to go into research."
The range of professors in SESE is coupled with extensive research opportunities with faculty members that can be accessed through simple outreach by students, Biswal said.
Professors, like Stroud, see these hands-on interactions in the field of space research as another unique aspect of SESE and a testament to ASU's dedication to the field of study.
"Our meteorite collection, for instance, lets all of our undergraduates come hold the piece of the moon and Mars if they want to," Stroud said. "So you get connected to the larger universe. That is just something I don't think any other university in the country does as well as ASU."
Opportunities within SESE don't end with the handling of meteorites either, as access to state-of-the-art technology allows students to build up expertise in the equipment utilized by current professionals in the field.
"They (students) get trained working on these very, very powerful instruments, powerful meaning they can give us information in so much detail," Bose said. "The students get trained on them, and then they can ask all sorts of questions. So once they are trained, they can use it for whatever they come up with."
That ability to train with high-level equipment ties into a larger benefit that some professors believe students reap from SESE, which is workplace readiness.
The private and commercial space industries have experienced massive booms in recent years, Stroud said, which has opened up doors for greater research and job opportunities within space exploration for students within SESE.
"We are trying to create this entire generation of students who would participate in all aspects of space exploration," Bose said.
That broadening of opportunities for career preparation is a trend in SESE as a whole that was noted by Stroud over the course of her years with the University.
Students like Biswal also noted the importance of ASU's investment in growing its space exploration program, due to the variety of benefits that can come from such research.
"All the filtration systems that we widely use right now, they were discovered because we needed a filtration system to go on to the International Space Station," Biswal said. "It's really important for us to put money into doing space research, because it definitely gets back here on Earth and helps us in various ways which we don't even think about every day."
For others, the importance of ASU's investment in SESE with the hiring of experts like Leshin comes from the inherent need to be deliberate and well-informed with humanity's advancement into the stars.
"This is a new, unpaved path," Stroud said. "We should decide intentionally ... about how we want to move forward, so we're not just treating (space) like everything's up for grabs or a lawless frontier, and then discover we destroyed amazing resources."
Edited by Jack McCarthy, Senna James and Ellis Preston.
Reach the reporter at sluba@asu.edu and follow @samluba6 on X.
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Sam Luba is a Senior Reporter with the State Press, focusing on longer form news stories and breaking news coverage. He is a Sophomore studying political science and justice studies, and is a competitor with Sun Devil Mock Trial. He was the Editor-in-Chief of his high school news magazine. He is in his 3rd Semester with the State Press, working previously as a Part-Time Political Reporter.
