Welcome to the Spring 2025 LPL Newsletter where we highlight the many recognitions and awards our faculty, staff, and students have received this past academic year. We are particularly proud of the many recognitions for the OSIRIS-REx team under the leadership of Regents Professor Dante Lauretta and the naming of Professor Ilaria Pascucci as winner of the University of Arizona Koffler Prize for her “groundbreaking and transformative contributions to the field of planetary science and observational astronomy.”

This semester we’ve had a strong run of science results, starting off with exciting OSIRIS-REx results highlighted as our feature article and on the cover of Nature. Thanks to OREx, other missions, expansion of our exoplanets portfolio, and the hard work of our faculty, postdocs, staff, and students, our publication output has shown steady growth over the past decade, up 62% since 2015.

As always, we had a very strong pool of graduate applicants this year and we brought many of them to campus back in March. For the first time in the over fifty-year history of our grad program, all of our incoming students will be women. We are excited to welcome them as they pursue studies in planetary atmospheres, astrobiology, surface analog studies, and much more.

Of course, a concern for us is the changing federal funding landscape, including proposed changes to NASA and NSF research and mission budgets. NASA in particular has historically enjoyed bipartisan support in Congress and we are optimistic that with the help of advocacy from the engaged public, including contacts with congressional representatives, proposed changes will be minimally impactful. New University of Arizona President Suresh Garimella and Senior Vice President for Research and Innovation Tomás Díaz De La Rubia are both strong advocates for the University of Arizona’s space science enterprise and we are hopeful that there will be new internal opportunities to help us sustain and grow in the coming year. More so than ever, our donor support is appreciated and will help us navigate through the changing federal landscape.