AAAS honors ASU Foundation Professor Kip Hodges as a lifetime fellow

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest general scientific society and publisher of the Science family of journals, has elected Kip Hodges from Arizona State University to the newest class of AAAS Fellows, among the most distinct honors within the scientific community.

The 2021 class of AAAS Fellows includes 564 scientists, engineers and innovators spanning 24 scientific disciplines who are being recognized for their scientifically and socially distinguished achievements. 

Hodges, a Foundation Professor at ASU’s School of Earth and Space Exploration, is being honored by the AAAS Council for his foundational and sustained contributions to the understanding of mountain building processes through research in the Himalayan-Tibetan orogenic system.

Hodges joined ASU in 2006 as founding director of the School of Earth and Space Exploration and continued to serve in that capacity until 2013. He has expertise in both Earth system science and planetary science, and his wide-ranging research integrates field, laboratory and theoretical science, with a dash of systems engineering.

He directs the Group 18 Laboratories at ASU, which is noted for creative approaches to constraining the thermal evolution of terrestrial and extraterrestrial samples through noble gas isotope geochemistry.

“Professor Hodges has made substantial contributions to understanding surface processes on the Earth and other planetary bodies,” said Meenakshi Wadhwa, School of Earth and Space Exploration director. “It is wonderful to see him be recognized, especially for his groundbreaking work on understanding tectonic processes in the Himalayas.”

Hodges has done field research in mountainous regions of North America, South America, Europe, and especially the Himalayas and Tibet. His laboratory projects have included the development of new laser analytical techniques for noble gas isotope geochemistry. He is also active in the development of new approaches to planetary field geology using human and robotic exploration strategies.

“It’s very gratifying to be honored by my peers in the scientific community,” Hodges said. “My research is highly collaborative, and I feel grateful for having such wonderful colleagues here at ASU and beyond. ASU provides an especially nurturing environment for someone like me who tends to work across traditional disciplinary boundaries, and I’ve tried my best to take full advantage.”

Hodges is a fellow of both the Geological Society of America and the American Geophysical Union. Until recently, he served as chairman of the Advisory Committee on Geosciences for the National Science Foundation. He is also one of the founding deputy editors of the AAAS interdisciplinary, open access journal Science Advances.

The 2021 AAAS Fellows will receive an official certificate and a gold and blue rosette pin to commemorate their election (representing science and engineering, respectively) and will be celebrated later this year during an in-person gathering when it is feasible from a public health and safety perspective. The new class will also be featured in the AAAS News & Notes section of Science in January 2022.