Provost of Imperial College London

Professor Walmsley graduated from Imperial with first class honours in physics in 1980, and completed his PhD at the University of Rochester before working as a postdoc at Cornell. He became Assistant Professor of Optics at the University of Rochester in 1988, and held a number of roles there before joining the University of Oxford in 2001 as Professor of Experimental Physics. He was also a Senior Visiting Fellow at Princeton University.

He became Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research) of the University of Oxford in 2009, and was appointed to the role of Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research and Innovation) in 2015.

As well as being a Fellow of the Institute of Physics he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2012 for his contributions to quantum optics and ultrafast optics. He has held a number of leadership roles in the Optical Society of America, currently serving as President. Professor Walmsley was a member of the EPSRC Physics Strategic Advisory Team and was on the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics’ Science Advisory Board.