Virginia Gail Toy (born 1979) is a New Zealand geologist who studies fault zones and earthquakes in New Zealand, Japan and Ecuador.^[1] She is one of the leaders of the Deep Fault Drilling Project of New Zealand's Alpine Fault,^[2] and was a research scientist on the Japan Trench Fast Drilling Project.^[3][4] She then worked as a research associate professor in geology and associate dean (international) in the Division of Sciences at the University of Otago.^[5] Toy currently works as a Professor at the University of Mainz.^[6]

Toy grew up on Auckland's North Shore and gained her Bachelor of Science then Master of Science (with honours) in geology from Auckland University. She then gained a Master of Philosophy in Earth Sciences from the Australian National University and a Doctor of Philosophy in geology from the University of Otago in 2008. Her PhD was on the (micro)structural geology of New Zealand's Alpine Fault.^[1][7]

In 2016 Toy was awarded a Rutherford Discovery Fellowship by the Royal Society for her research entitled: 'Weaving the Earth's Weak Seams: Manifestations and mechanical consequences of rock fabric evolution in active faults and shear zones'.^[8]

In 2017 Toy co-published in Nature that they had discovered "extreme" hydrothermal activity beneath Whataroa, a small township on the Alpine Fault, which "could be commercially very significant"^[9][10] and possibly globally unique.^[11]

Toy also worked on building stability during earthquakes in Ecuador, using computer modelling to determine the relationship between rock type and building damage.^[12] She has been used numerous times by New Zealand media as a geological expert, on the Kaikōura earthquake,^[13] tsunami risk,^[14] predicting the next earthquake on the Alpine Fault^[15] and the misreporting of science in the media.^[16] She has also been used as a popular science presenter in the book Terrain: Travels Through a Deep Landscape^[17] and TV show Beneath New Zealand.