Dr. Lucas Landherr joined the Chemical Engineering Department of Northeastern University in the fall of 2012, and has since been conducting engineering education research into novel teaching techniques for undergraduate and K-12 STEM education. They have focused on the development of comics to teach complex science and engineering concepts, through collaboration with professional and student artists, and their comics have been adopted by colleges throughout the U.S. as well as in the U.K., Belgium, and Denmark. Dr. Landherr is currently a regular contributor to Chemical Engineering Education, producing the "Drawn To Engineering" comic, and is the engineering consultant helping to develop the Crash Course Engineering series with PBS Digital.
Dr. Landherr previously received a Bachelor’s degree from Lafayette College in 2005 with an honors thesis studying drag-reducing polymers and completed their Ph.D. at Cornell University in 2010, developing and characterizing thin polymer films and brushes as nanoscale lubricants. While at Cornell, Dr. Landherr received a GK-12 NSF Fellowship, with which they designed curriculum and physics experiments for high school classrooms. In 2012, Dr. Landherr completed an NRC Postdoctoral Research Associateship with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), where they conducted research on polymeric interactions with superhydrophobic surfaces.