Alice P Gast

Alice P. Gast is is the 16th President of Imperial College London in London, United Kingdom. Previously, she served as the President of Lehigh University, the Vice President for Research and Associate Provost and Robert T. Haslam Chair in Chemical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Professor of Chemical Engineering at Stanford University. She is the co-author of Physical Chemistry of Surfaces, a classic textbook on colloid and surface phenomena, and author and co-author on a number of scientific publications. Dr. Gast has presented named lectures at several of the nation's leading research institutions and has been a presenter and panelist at a number of international meetings and conferences. In 2010, Dr. Gast was named to the prestigious post of science envoy by the U.S. State Department. Additionally, she is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. Dr. Gast has served on a number of national advisory committees and boards, including the Board of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the National Space Biomedical Research Institute Board of Directors. She currently serves on the Academic Research Council for the Singapore Ministry of Education and the National Research Council Committee for Science, Technology, and the Law. In 2012, Dr. Gast was appointed to the board of directors of Chevron Corporation. She earned her bachelor's degree in Chemical Engineering from University of Southern California in 1980 and her master's and PhD in Chemical Engineering from Princeton University in 1981 and 1984. She spent a postdoctoral year as a NATO fellow at the École Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles in Paris.