Gast To Head Lehigh

Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa., has named Alice P. Gast as its president, effective Aug. 1. Gast, 47, is currently vice president for research and associate provost at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she is also Robert T. Haslam Professor of Chemical Engineering. With her selection, she garnered accolades for her research and teaching from academic leaders.

"I am tremendously honored to be asked to serve Lehigh University as its 13th president," Gast said after being selected. She will succeed Gregory C. Farrington, who served for eight years and will step down in June. The 140-year-old private university has more than 400 full-time faculty and 7,000 graduate and undergraduate students.

Gast has been in her role at MIT since 2001. She moved there after 16 years at Stanford University, where she was associate chair of the chemical engineering department. She received a B.S. degree from the University of Southern California and a Ph.D. from Princeton University. Her research centers on complex fluids and colloids, including macromolecules at interfaces, disorder-order transitions and wetting in suspensions, magneto-rheological fluids, and microfluidics.

This year, Gast won the ACS Award in Colloid & Surface Chemistry. She is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. In recognition of her work, Gast received an NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award, a Camille & Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, a National Academy of Sciences Award for Initiatives in Research, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an Alexander von Humboldt Award.