2011 Darsh T. Wasan Lecture: Alice P. Gast

The Darsh T. Wasan Lecture was established in 2008 in honor of IIT Motorola Chair and Vice President of International Affairs Darsh T. Wasan's extraordinary contributions to the university over the last forty-five years. The lecture series seeks to bring some of the best and brightest internationally-known leaders to speak on cutting-edge topics of global issues. The lectureship series is made possible by donations from former students of Dr. Wasan, friends, and faculty.

Alice P. Gast, a renowned leader in higher education and a distinguished researcher in the study of surface and interfacial phenomena and was appointed the 13th president of Lehigh University in 2006. She is 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.



Before coming to Lehigh, Gast served as vice president for research and associate provost at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and held the Robert T. Haslam chair in chemical engineering. She previously spent 16 years as a professor of chemical engineering at Stanford University and the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory.



Gast was named one of the top 100 "Modern Era" engineers in the country, under the category of "Leadership" by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. In 2010, she was named to the prestigious post of science envoy by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and the U.S. State Department. Gast is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. Also in 2010, she was awarded an honorary degree from The University of Western Ontario where she was described as "a scholar, a researcher and a leader who is a great inspiration to female and male students alike, who aspire to enter the profession of engineering."



Gast earned her bachelor's degree in Chemical Engineering from University of Southern California in 1980 and her master's and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Princeton University in 1981 and 1984.

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