Christine Luscombe

Luscombe was born and raised in Kobe, Japan.[3] She became interested in chemistry at high school, and grew up surrounded by electronic devices developed by Sony and Panasonic.[4] She was an undergraduate student at the University of Cambridge, where she specialised in chemistry.[3] She eventually joined the group of Andrew Bruce Holmes, where she worked on polymer synthesis and earned her PhD in 2004.[5]

After her PhD, Luscombe was awarded a junior research fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge. She simultaneously joined the group of Jean Fréchet at the University of California, Berkeley.[3] After two years in California, Luscombe was made an Assistant Professor at the University of Washington. In her early career she was awarded an National Science Foundation CAREER Award, a DARPA Young Faculty Award and a Sloan Research Fellowship.[3] She was made an Associate Professor in 2011 and the Robert J. Cambell Development Professor in 2017. Her research considers the synthesis of conjugated small molecules and polymers for photovoltaics. She is particularly interested in the identification of structure-property relationships and achieving a better understanding of how microstructure impacts optoelectronic properties.[6] She has particularly focused on the rational design of high mobility polymers.[7] She has contributed to International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) initiatives on polymer terminology and polymer education.[8][4]

In 2020, Luscombe joined the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology.[9] In an interview with Chemical & Engineering News, Luscombe says that she began to feel unwelcome in the United States when Donald Trump instigated Executive Order 13769, the so-called Muslim travel ban.[10] She said that she chose to leave the United States due to the growing racism and mismanagement of the public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic.[10]