Pierre Lucas

Pierre Lucas is a professor of materials science and engineering and a professor of optical engineering at the University of Arizona in Tucson, in the United States. He received his PhD in physical chemistry from Arizona State University in 1999 and the Bachelor of Science in chemistry from the University of Rennes, France, in 1993. He was director of the CNRS International Associated Laboratory for Materials and Optics from 2009-2017. Lucas is the author of more than 120 peer-reviewed publications and nine book chapters in the field of materials science. He is also author of the book Rare Earths: Science, Technology, Production and Use, Elsevier, 2014.

Lucas’ research focuses on the fundamentals and applications of chalcogenide glasses and phase change materials, including their structure, photosensitivity, relaxation, polyamoprhism, and the development of novel optical sensors and fibers. He is an associate editor for the Journal of American Ceramic Society and was the chair of the Glass and Optical Materials Division of The American Ceramic Society (2017-2018). He has chaired two international conferences on Glass and Optical Materials: the Joint ICG-GOMD conference at PACRIM in Vancouver 2009, and the GOMD conference at MS&T in Columbus in 2011. He has been the recipient of three teaching awards and has been an invited professor at the University of Rennes in France, at the Technological Institute of Monterrey in Mexico and at Jiangsu Normal University, Xuzhou, in China.