Lukas is a Senior Geotechnical Engineer with specific expertise in frozen soil mechanics, periglacial risk assessments and geothermal modelling. He received his PhD in engineering at ETH Zürich. He has worked on infrastructure and mining projects in Arctic and mountain permafrost, and on the stability of frozen slopes in the European Alps, the South American Andes and Asia. Additional work has concentrated on the thermo-mechanical processes of frozen and freezing soils at a microstructural level to better understand the hydraulic, strength and deformation properties of frozen soils with changing stress, temperature and salinity. He developed a probabilistic permafrost distribution model for mountainous terrain, extensively used in South America. Lukas has taught permafrost engineering courses at universities and for industry, and published over 60 scientific publications on topics related to cold regions engineering. He was chair of the Cold Regions Engineering Division of the Canadian Geotechnical Society, and is currently co-chair of the Permafrost Engineering Task Force of the International Permafrost Association and an Adjunct Professor at the Civil Engineering Department of the University of Manitoba. He was the recipient of the Troy L. Péwé award in 2003 and was awarded the Roger J. E. Brown Memorial Award from the Canadian Geotechnical Society in 2010 for his contributions to permafrost engineering research and to the cold regions engineering division.