Richard Craster

Richard Craster is the Dean of the Faculty of Natural Sciences at Imperial College and formerly Head of Department of Mathematics at Imperial College a role he held for six years (2011-2017). He is also Director of the CNRS-Imperial "Abraham de Moivre" International Research Laboratory in Mathematics.  He has been at Imperial College as an academic since 1998 apart from holding a distinguished professorship in Alberta, Canada, 2008-2010 returning to become Head of the Mathematics Department at Imperial. In addition to being a Professor of Applied Mathematics he is also a member of the Mechanical Engineering Department at Imperial.

His research lies in the field of applied mathematics in particular wave mechanics, metamaterials, fluid mechanics and elasticity. He is the co-editor of one of first books on Acoustic Metamaterials, PI of an EPSRC Programme grant on the Mathematical fundamentals of Metamaterials, co-organiser of the UK Acoustics Network (www.acoustics.ac.uk), and recently co-editor of the volume on Elastic Metamaterials for the Handbook of Metamaterials.

In teaching and education matters, he chaired the A-level Content Advisory Board for the Russell Group, for Mathematics, reporting to the Department for Education; this advice shaped the content of the current A-level in Mathematics. He currently chairs the A-level Mathematics contact group for ACME reporting to the Royal Society, and chairs the advisory board of Mathematics in Education and Industry (www.mei.org.uk).

He sits on the scientific advisory boards of the Smith Institute (www.smithinst.co.uk) and Multiwave (an SME in metamaterials), has undertaken numerous consultancy and advisory roles in both industry and government. His research is mainly in the area of acoustic metamaterials, elastic wave propagation and fluid mechanics and ranges from theory, simulation through to experiments usually undertaken with collaborators in engineering and physics.