Prof. Walter Gear

Professor Walter Gear is the Executive Dean for the College of Science and Engineering at University of Galway.

Prof. Gear oversaw the merger of the previously separate colleges of Science and Engineering and Informatics into The College of Science and Engineering, including restructuring of the schools within the college and has set a strong vision to support ambition in education and in research and innovation, to provide innovative and competitive programmes of research, and to drive excellence in research and education. The College of Science and Engineering do this by attracting and developing talented researchers, nurturing fundamental and translational research and delivering intellectual capacity.

Prof. Gear is an astrophysicist who has worked on ground and space-based experiments in the far-infrared to millimetre wavelength range. His research is currently concerned with star formation in galaxies and has previously worked on Active Galactic Nuclei and Cosmology, including the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation, in which field he co-led an experiment based at the South Pole, for and has published over 150 refereed papers with over 27000 citations, including 4 papers with over 1000 citations. Before coming to Galway Professor Gear was at Cardiff University for 20 years where he created the Astronomy Instrumentation group, and subsequently spent eight years as Head of the School of Physics and Astronomy. Prior to that he was at University College London, and the Royal Observatory Edinburgh where he led the pioneering SCUBA camera at James Clerk Maxwell telescope (JCMT).

Prof Gear has also taken many roles in peer review and advisory committees in the UK and Europe and is currently a member of the International Oversight Board for the JCMT. In 2012, Gear was elected a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales.

He earned his BSc and PhD at Queen Mary, University of London, where he studies Physics and Astrophysics.