Professor Gareth Collins has accepted the role of Acting Head of Department of Earth Science and Engineering between the period of 1 November 2023 and 28 February 2024. This is to provide cover for the current Head of the Department, Professor Tina van De Flierdt, while she will be away conducting fieldwork in the Antarctic.
Professor Collins joined Imperial in 2004 as a Research Fellow, after obtaining his PhD in Geology from Imperial in 2002. He was promoted to Senior Lecturer (2011), Reader (2014) and to Professor of Planetary Science in 2018.
Gareth’s research explores the many consequences of collisions in the solar system through the development and application of numerical impact models. Major research contributions include studies of the formation of the Chicxulub impact crater and its role in the K-Pg mass extinction, as well as the formation of many other craters on Earth, the Moon and the role of collisions in the early solar system. He was a co-investigator on the NASA-led InSight mission to Mars and on the Science Investigations Teams of NASA’s DART mission and ESA’s Hera mission.