Lutgard C. De Jonghe graduated in Chemical Engineering in Antwerp Belgium, after which he joined the Nuclear Research Center in Mol, Belgium. In 1965 he came to the US, obtained an MS Degree in Materials Science-Metallurgy at the University of Delaware in 1968, and a Ph.D. in Materials Sciences at the University California at Berkeley in 1970. Thereafter, he was a Research Fellow at the Division of Engineering and Applied Physics at Harvard. In 1972 he joined the faculty of Materials Sciences Department at Cornell University. Since 1978 he has been a faculty member at U. C. Berkeley and a Senior Scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He has worked on gas-solid reactions, ionic conductors, processing of advanced ceramics, thin film solid oxide fuel cells, and lithium batteries. He currently continues his research on thin fuel cells, ceramic processing and high temperature structural ceramics at the UCB-LBNL He has published over 200 articles, monographs and other publications and holds 22 patents. .

He was Chairman of the first Gordon Research Conference on Ceramic Processing in 1985. He has received several awards, including a Senior US Scientist A. v. Humboldt Award, and was Engineering Alumnus 2000 at U. of Delaware. He is a Fellow of the American Ceramic Society and has served on numerous national and international committees.

He teaches an undergraduate course on dielectrics, ferroelectrics, and magnetic materials, and a course on materials characterization, as well as a graduate course on fuel cells.