IFISC People: Lucas Lacasa

We are pleased to announce that Prof. Lucas Lacasa joins IFISC as a CSIC Tenured Scientist.

Lucas was previously Reader in Applied Mathematics at the School of Mathematical Sciences, Queen Mary University of London (UK) as well as an associate fellow at Kings College London and an EPSRC Early Career Fellow. He has received several academic distinctions, including the 2019 International Prize on Formal Sciences awarded by USERN and the Research Excellence Award from QMUL (2020). In the past he was a guest scientist at UCLA and Oxford, and currently serves in various editorial boards such as PLoS ONE or Entropy. 

His research focuses on building on his background in nonlinear dynamics, statistical physics and network theory to develop methods for data analysis, and is interested in both fundamental aspects of complexity science as well as in their applications to biological and socio-technical systems. He has published about 80 papers in areas spanning multidisciplinary science (PNAS, Nature Communications), physics (Physical Review X, Physical Review Letters), mathematics (Nonlinearity) or computer science (IEEE TPAMI), and his research has been highlighted in the press over 150 times.  

In a previous life, he tried to be a musician. Apparently his last band only really took off and reached popularity once he left, probably a good indicator that he made the right decision in choosing science. Still, he loves music and is generally interested in the interface between art and science.