KING ABDULLAH UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Distinguished Speaker
Alice P . Gast Professor Emeritus of Chemical Engineering and former President , Imperial College London
Professor Alice P . Gast is Professor Emeritus and former President of Imperial College London . Prior to her appointment at Imperial , she was President of Lehigh University ( 2006-2014 ) and 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 on the faculty of Stanford University ( 1985-2001 ) in Chemical Engineering , Chemistry ( by courtesy ) and affiliated with the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory .
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 Académie des Technologies , and a member of the National Academy of Engineering . Her honors and awards include honorary degrees from the University of Notre Dame , L ’ Université Pierre et Marie Curie , Paris , Universiti Teknologi Malaysia and University of Western Ontario .
Professor Gast was appointed to the Board of Directors of Chevron Corporation in 2012 . She served on the Board of Trustees of KAUST from 2011-2019 , is currently on the International Advisory Board of Turku University ; the Board of Overseers of Koç University ; a member of the Academic Research Council for the Singapore Ministry of Education ; the Technical University of Munich ( TUM )’ s Institute for Advanced Study ; the Royal Academy of Engineering ’ s International Committee ; and the Chatham House Initiative on the Future of the UK ’ s Global Role .