Peter Allison

Professor Peter Allison is a Professor of Earth Sciences at Imperial College London's Department of Earth Science & Engineering, part of the Faculty of Engineering. His affiliations include the Applied Modelling and Computation Group, Grantham Institute, and Ocean and Climate research groups. He holds roles such as Head of Section (E2M2) and has directed undergraduate studies. His career spans over three decades with academic positions at Imperial College (since 1997), the University of Reading, and postdoctoral research in Japan and the U.S.

Education: PhD from the University of Bristol (1984–1987), followed by postdoctoral fellowships at Kochi University (Japan) and the University of Washington (USA). Research interests focus on ocean and ancient sedimentary systems, palaeobiology, fossil preservation, and epi-continental seas. Notable contributions include tidal modeling of ancient seaways and co-editing Taphonomy: Bias and Process Through Time (2011).

Scientific awards include the SEPM 'Honorable Mention' (2008) and invitations as keynote speaker at major conferences. His work integrates numerical modeling with geological data, addressing topics like dinosaur extinction mechanisms, sediment preservation bias, and deltaic system dynamics. Grants include NERC-funded projects on Cretaceous sedimentation and Miocene coastal systems. He advises PhD candidates through Imperial's Climate Change Gateway program.

Labs/teams: Active in the Applied Modelling and Computation Group, leveraging computational methods for earth systems analysis. Collaborates on projects like tidal resource impacts in the Pentland Firth and palaeogeographic reconstructions of Australasia.