Lukas graduated as a Medical Doctor at KU Leuven in 2001. During his specialist training in psychiatry, he was granted a PhD-fellowship of the Research Foundation – Flanders, resulting in his doctoral thesis ‘Psychobiological mechanisms in functional dyspepsia. Converging evidence from psychophysiology & functional brain imaging?’ (KU Leuven, 2008). He then worked as a postdoctoral fellow of the Research Foundation – Flanders at the Translational Research Center for Gastrointestinal Diseases (TARGID) of KU Leuven from 2009 until 2012. In 2012, he was appointed assistant research professor of the KU Leuven Special Research Fund, allowing him to establish his own group, the Laboratory for Brain-Gut Axis Studies (LaBGAS). His research has been internationally authoritative, as reflected by more than 200 peer-reviewed publications, numerous invited and abstract presentations at scientific meetings, and several international research awards. In 2020, Lukas got granted an ERC Consolidator Grant MoodBugs, focus on microbiota-gut-brain signaling mechanisms mediating the impact of the gut microbiota on stress and fear responses in humans.