Alice Gast
American academic administrator and businessperson, President, Imperial College London
Alice Petry Gast (May 25, 1958 – October 27, 2025) was an American researcher who was the 16th president of Imperial College London, and sat on the board of directors of Chevron. Gast was named one of the top 100 "modern era" engineers in the U.S. under the category of "leadership" by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.
Early life and education
Born in Houston, Texas, Gast graduated as valedictorian from the University of Southern California in 1980 with a BSc degree in chemical engineering. She completed her postgraduate work at Princeton University, receiving an MA degree (1981) and a PhD degree (1984) in chemical engineering, with thesis on Polymer-Induced Phase Transitions in Colloidal Suspensions and was a Hertz Fellow.
Career and research
After her doctorate, Gast spent a postdoctoral year completing a NATO fellowship at the École Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles in Paris. From 1985 to 2001, she taught at Stanford University, and then moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she served as the vice president for research and associate provost until her appointment as Lehigh University president in 2006.
The focus of Gast's research career was the study of surface and interfacial phenomena, in particular the behavior of complex fluids. Her areas of research include colloidal aggregation and ordering, protein lipid interactions, and enzyme reactions at surfaces. She is the co-author of Physical Chemistry of Surfaces, a classic textbook on colloid and surface phenomena, and has presented named lectures at several of the nation's leading research institutions.
Presidency of Imperial College London
Gast was named president of Imperial College London on 3 January 2014, taking up post on 1 September 2014.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Alice Gast” as american academic administrator and businessperson, President, Imperial College London. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as american academic administrator and businessperson, President, Imperial College London. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4725875. VIAF identifies the subject as 161354289. The Library of Congress control number is n86829948. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1958, 2025, 1980 and 1981.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Alice Gast”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Alice Gast primary sources, Alice Gast archive and Alice research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Alice Gast”?
- What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Alice Gast” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.