Professor Alice P. Gast is President of Imperial College London. Prior to her appointment at Imperial in September 2014, Professor Gast was the President of Lehigh University (2006 – 2014) and the Vice-President for Research and Associate Provost and Robert T. Haslam Professor of Chemical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2001 – 2006). An expert in surface and interfacial phenomena and the behaviour of complex fluids, Professor Gast was a faculty member at Stanford University (1985 – 2001), being promoted to full professor in 1995. She was affiliated with the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory.
Professor Gast spent several years of her scientific career overseas, first as a postdoctoral student on a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) fellowship at the École Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles in Paris. While serving as professor of chemical engineering at Stanford University, she returned to Paris for a sabbatical as a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow in 1991. In 1999, she was an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Fellow in Munich, Germany.
Professor Gast is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, the Royal Academy of Engineering, the City and Guilds of London Institute, and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering. She is on the Board of Directors of Chevron Corporation, and is a member of the Academic Research Council for the Singapore Ministry of Education.