Alice P. Gast
President, Lehigh University
Alice P. Gast, a world renowned scholar, researcher, and academic leader, became the 13th president of Lehigh University on August 1, 2006.
Since taking office, President Gast has focused on positioning Lehigh as a premier residential research university of international distinction, capitalizing on the University's strengths as a research university and a residential college and its core values of integrity and honesty, equitable community, academic freedom, intellectual curiosity, collaboration, commitment to excellence, and leadership. She is actively engaged in transforming the intellectual footprint of the University, applying the best thinking of the Lehigh community to determine how the University will contribute to the next generation of problem solvers and the creation of new ideas to address the world's most serious challenges. Fundamental to this transformation is an emphasis on continuing to hire and retain the highest quality faculty and staff.
Before coming to Lehigh, Dr. Gast served as the vice president for research and associate provost at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she was also the Robert T. Haslam chair in chemical engineering. Prior to joining MIT in 2001, she spent 16 years as a professor of chemical engineering at Stanford University and at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory.
The focus of Dr. Gast's distinguished 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.
Dr. Gast serves on a number of national advisory committees and boards, including the Board of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), is a member of the Academic Research Council for the Singapore Ministry of Education and the National Research Council Committee for Science, Technology, and the Law. She is a member of the AAAS, the American Chemical Society, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers and the American Physical Society.
In recognition of her achievements, Dr. Gast has received numerous awards and honors including the National Academy of Sciences Award for Initiative in Research, the Colburn Award of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Teacher Scholar Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2001 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2002. She was named an AAAS Fellow in early 2007.
After earning a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from the University of Southern California, Dr. Gast was a Hertz Fellow while earning her doctorate in chemical engineering from Princeton University. She spent a postdoctoral year completing a NATO fellowship at the École Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles in Paris.
Dr. Gast resides on campus with her husband, Bradley J. Askins, and their two children.