Lucas earned his Ph.D. at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where he studied the epidemiology and molecular basis of drug resistance in the malaria-causing parasite Plasmodium vivax. While at Harvard, he also worked extensively on projects aimed at improving student civic engagement. He served as a science policy fellow at the Massachusetts Statehouse working on legislation related to HIV care access and supporting aging LGBTQ persons. He holds a master of science in infectious disease epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a B.A. from Emory University.