Lucas Lourens (1966) studied geology at the Utrecht University. He graduated in 1994 on Plio-Pleistocene climate changes in the Mediterranean Sea and continued his research through a variety of postdoc positions at the Utrecht University (1994-1999), the Free University of Amsterdam (1999-2000) and the CNRS-Cerege in Aix en Provence (2000-2001). In 2002 he received from the Netherlands Scientific Organization (NWO) a Vidi award to study the changes in the speed of the Earth’s rotational axis on geological time scales and became a permanent staff member of the Stratigraphy/Palaeontology group. He participated in expeditions to the Walvis Ridge (Leg 208) and Gulf of Cadiz (EXP 339) with the international Ocean Drilling Program (ODP/IODP). His research directed at the Greenhouse World of 55 million years ago took a central role in outreach acitivities, such as the grand battle between universities in the context of the Nationale Academische Jaarprijs 2006-2007 organized by the NRC Handelsblad. In 2010, he received a Vici award from NWO, which enabled him to build his own research group with as main theme to investigate the influence and evolution of astronomically-forced climate changes during the Greenhouse and Icehouse Worlds of the Cenozoic. From February 1, 2011 he became appointed as chair of the Paleoclimatology group at the department of Earth Sciences, Faculty of the Geosciences, Utrecht University. In his inaugural speech, Climate Extremes, Lucas Lourens places the recent warming of the Earth in a geological perspective. He was honoured with the Jean Baptiste Lamarck medal for his achievements in stratigraphy at the European Geosciences Union of 2016.

earth sciences