Alumni Gazette

Ian Walmsley ’86 (PhD), a pioneer in ultrafast and quantum optics and a former faculty member of Rochester’s Institute of Optics, has been named provost at Imperial College London, effective September 1, 2018.

He is currently pro-vice-chancellor for research and innovation and Hooke Professor of Experimental Physics at the University of Oxford.

At Oxford, Walmsley has overseen the university’s relationships with its research funders and has worked to engage wider audiences with scientific research.

Elected a fellow of the American Physical Society in 2001, Walmsley has helped advance the fields of spectroscopy, cryptography, quantum computing, and precision measurement. He joined the Institute of Optics faculty in 1988 and became director of the Center for Quantum Information Systems, established in 1999 with a Department of Defense grant and drawing together faculty from Rochester, Cornell, Harvard, Rutgers, and Stanford. He led the institute during a period of transition in 2000.

A dedicated teacher, Walmsley won the Goergen Award for Distinguished Achievement and Artistry in Undergraduate Education from Arts, Sciences & Engineering in 1999.

He is an undergraduate alumnus of Imperial College, having earned a BSc degree with first-class honors in physics.

—Karen McCally