Fred Longstaffe

Who is Fred Longstaffe?

Fred J. Longstaffe Ph.D., FRSC is the Provost and Vice-President at The University of Western Ontario. He is a highly regarded leader in Earth Science research. His current focus is on applying knowledge of stable isotopes to various fields of study.

Longstaffe earned a BSc from the University of Windsor and a PhD in Geology from McMaster University. In 1978, he was a researcher at the University of Alberta as a Killam Post-Doctoral Scholar. After that he joined that university’s Department of Geology faculty. In 1987, Longstaffe moved to the Western as a full professor in Geology and opened the Laboratory for Stable Isotope Science. The labs principal research areas are environmental geochemistry and clastic diagenesis, with special emphasis on the application of stable isotopes and other biogeochemical methods to studies of the environment and climate change. The Departments of Geology and Geophysics were merged in 1993. He became the Chair of the newly formed Department of Earth Sciences. Dr. Longstaffe gave up that position in 1999 to take on the larger role of Dean of the Faculty of Science. In July 2005, Longstaffe became the university’s Provost and VP Academic.