Laurie Leshin, an internationally recognized geochemist, space scientist and the director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is the recipient of the 2023 Alumni Achievement Award.

Leshin has received accolades for her barrier-breaking leadership in the space industry and academia, and her accomplishments as a distinguished geochemist and space scientist. The first female president of Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), Leshin’s career encompasses two White House appointments and having asteroid 4922 named for her.

She credits ASU with planting the seeds to her success. Her passion for space exploration began first as a student at ASU and continued as a faculty member. After earning her bachelor’s degree at ASU, she received her master’s and doctoral degrees in geochemistry from the California Institute of Technology.

Among academic posts she held at ASU, she was the Dee and John Whiteman Dean’s Distinguished Professor of Geological Sciences in 2001 and director of ASU’s Center for Meteorite Studies in 2003. Leshin also led the creation of the ASU School of Earth and Space Exploration. In 2004, while a faculty member at ASU, she served on President George W. Bush's Commission on Implementation of United States Space Exploration Policy.

Leshin left ASU in 2005 to join NASA, where she served for six years in several senior executive roles. Leshin served as dean of the School of Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York, where she continued her work as a scientist for the Mars Curiosity Rover mission and was appointed by President Obama to the Advisory Board for the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. She was president of WPI, a leading, innovative STEM University, from 2014 to 2022.

Leshin is a recipient of NASA's Outstanding Leadership Medal and Distinguished Public Service Medal, and of the Meteoritical Society's Nier Prize, awarded for outstanding research in meteoritics or planetary science by a scientist under the age of 35. In recognition of her service as WPI president, the university named the Laurie A. Leshin Global Project Center building in her honor.

In 2022 she became the first female director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. JPL seeks to drive the forefront of scientific discovery in planetary science, Earth science and astrophysics through robotic spacecraft missions, such as the Mars Perseverance Rover and Ingenuity Helicopter, the newly launched Surface Water and Ocean Topography mission, and the upcoming Europa Clipper, NEO Surveyor and Mars Sample Return missions.