Arvidson to receive Weidenbaum Center Award for Excellence

Ray Arvidson
Arvidson

Raymond E. Arvidson, the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, will receive the Weidenbaum Center Award for Excellence Medal. The award will be given at a ceremony held during the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy annual dinner April 2 and honors individuals who have made major contributions to both scholarship and public service. 

Arvidson, who is also director of the Earth and Planetary Remote Sensing Laboratory in the McDonnell Center for Space Sciences, is an interdisciplinary scientist focused on teaching and research about current and past environments on Earth, Mars and Venus.

He is the deputy principal investigator for the highly successful Mars Exploration Rovers (Spirit and Opportunity), and he has been instrumental in developing and implementing both orbital and landed missions to the planets. He is a science team member and mobility specialist for the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity Rover that has been exploring Mars since August 2012.

Arvidson is also the director of the NASA Planetary Data System Geosciences Node, helping make NASA data available to the worldwide research community. He is a fellow of the Geological Society of America and the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and received the AGU Whipple Award and the Lester Stroud Award from the Society of Applied Spectroscopy.

He has also been honored with the Missouri Governor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, received three NASA Public Service Medals and several dozen NASA citations for excellence, and has received several awards from Washington University research and teaching excellence.

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