Lucas grew up in Portsmouth and moved north to do his undergraduate Master’s in Biochemistry at the University of Sheffield. After a year and a half in London, working as a research technician at UCL, he applied to the Grainger lab to undertake his PhD. Lucas’s work, on gene regulation in Vibrio cholerae, was funded by the BBSRC as part of the MIBTP. After completing his PhD, Lucas was appointed to the position of scientist at Apis Assay Technologies.