Many of the people who make a hugely positive difference to the lives and prospects of Hammersmith & Fulham's residents often remain unknown to most. Professor Alice Gast, who died on Monday (27 October 2025) after a long illness, was one of those remarkable human beings.
President of Imperial Collage London between 1 August 2014 to 31 July 2022, Professor Gast was instrumental in setting up the Upstream London industrial strategy partnership between Imperial and Hammersmith & Fulham Council - which we launched together, along with the White City Innovation District, on 12 July 2017.
The aim was to build inclusive economic growth in the 'long cycle' industries that are shaping the future and, in the process, opening up the best careers and life opportunities to our residents.
Since 2017, the results have been staggering. Our small West London Borough has created over 13,000 jobs in future industries, has more spin-out start-up businesses than anywhere else in the UK, has London's fastest growing economy and has won £6billion of investment – which to provide context, is more than all the rest of West London combined.
H&F has won £1.1billion in green and climate tech investment which is more than Birmingham, Manchester and Bristol put together. And there has been an 813% increase in green and climate tech jobs.
I honestly believe none of that could have happened without Professor Gast.
An Emeritus Professor of Chemical Engineering and the first woman to lead Imperial, I met Professor Gast on 29 June 2016 to try to persuade her of the benefits of forming an inclusive economic growth partnership with Hammersmith & Fulham. Our team included Cllr Andrew Jones who is also a renowned professor of economic geography, Greg Jackson who was H&F's volunteer Business Commissioner and Christina Smyth who had astutely arranged the meeting and was H&F's volunteer Poverty and Worklessness Commissioner.
We set out how we thought that by working together with Imperial we could in Hammersmith & Fulham begin to cluster an inclusive economic ecosystem of start-ups and large corporate businesses in science, tech, engineering, maths, medicines and media (STEM³).
We described how we would align our schools and would invest in new youth clubs and services so these new opportunities would be accessible to local young people. And we talked about how we believed we could transform our small part of London into a global economic hotspot if together with Imperial we were able to cooperate closely with agility and speed. Professor Gast's answer was to the point.
She simply said yes. It was a serendipitous meeting of minds. Professor Gast described how she thought the world was changing quicker than ever before and that such a cluster could not only advance Imperial but could change our residents' lives for the better. I was struck how she moved the conversation on to the importance of making economic growth inclusive.
She genuinely cared and described with upset and compassion how she felt about the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire after that tragedy had happened just two weeks earlier. When she talked about how she believed we could make a real difference to people's lives and offer hope for the future, it was inspirational.
WATCH: Professor Alice Gast launches H&F and Imperial College London's partnership, Upstream London
It's unique for a council to have a joint economic growth strategy with a world leading university. I'm not sure we'd have got the same immediately positive reaction from a more establishment type of president or vice chancellor of a UK university.
Before becoming Imperial's 16th President in September 2014, American-born Professor Gast had had an impressive career. She studied at Princeton and served as president at Lehigh University. Critically, she taught at Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - both universities which are at the centre of world-leading economic ecosystems. Professor Gast had also been a Science Envoy for US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
By the time we formally launched our joint industrial strategy a year later, our partnership with Imperial had evolved into a close working relationship. That has maintained to the present day. With Imperial's centre of gravity firmly in White City and new STEM³ off shoots of labs, workspace, start-ups and student housing peppering and increasingly enriching our borough.
According to the QS World University Rankings, Imperial has leapt from eighth to the second best university in the world since 2017, just behind MIT. The new collaborative White City Campus is cited as a key factor in that leap – something very much to Professor Gast's lasting legacy. I know all in our administration send our deepest condolences to her husband, children and loved ones.
Alice Gast was famous for her towering intellect. She understood much about this every more complicated and changing world. She was a visionary and a friend to Hammersmith & Fulham who helped set us on a course that is transforming our economic prospects.
