Professor Loucks teaches and carries out research in the application of systems analysis, economic theory, ecology and environmental engineering to problems in regional development and environmental quality management including air, land, and water resource systems. He has authored articles and book chapters in these subject areas. He served as Chair of the Department from 1974 to 1980, and as Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies in the College of Engineering from 1980 to 1981. He has also been a Research Fellow at Harvard University (1968); an Economist at the Development Research Center of the World Bank (1972-73); a Research Scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (1981-1982); and a Visiting Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1977-78), the University of Colorado in Boulder (1992), the University of Adelaide in South Australia (1992), the Aachen University of Technology in Germany (1993 and 1995), the Technical University of Delft in the Netherlands (1995), and the University of Texas in Austin (2000). Since 1969 he has served as a consultant to private and government agencies and various organizations of the United Nations, the World Bank, and NATO involved in regional water resources development planning in Asia, Australia, Eastern and Western Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. From 1975 to 1978 he was a consultant to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency participating in the US-USSR exchange program on environmental protection. Since 1976 he has been a visiting professor in water resources-environmental systems engineering at the International Institute for Hydraulic and Environmental Engineering in Delft, The Netherlands.

Loucks has served on various committees of the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, and was a U.S. member of an advisory committee for the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Laxenburg, Austria. From 1977 to 1990, he served as a member of the IIASA liaison committee of the National Academy of Sciences, and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The Secretary of the Army appointed him to US Army Corps of Engineers Environmental Advisory Board in 1994. He served as Vice Chair and Chair from 1995 to 1998, and received the Commander's Award for Public Service in 1998. He currently is a member of a NRC committee on the Restoration of the Greater Everglades Ecosystem and of an International Joint Commission Study Board pertaining to the Great Lakes.

Loucks was awarded the Huber Research Prize in 1970 and the Julian Hinds Award in 1986 by the American Society of Civil Engineers. He was elected to Fellow in the Society in 1983 and to Honorary member in 1998. In 1975 he received a Fulbright-Hayes Fellowship to lecture in Yugoslavia. He has chaired various committees in professional societies in civil engineering, geophysical science, and operations research. He is a member of five honorary societies, including Sigma Xi and Phi Kappa Phi, and serves as an associate editor and as a member of editorial boards of professional journals in the U.S. and in Europe. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1989. He received Distinguished Lecture Awards by the National Research Council of Taiwan in 1990 and 1999, an EDUCOM Award for software development in 1991, the Senior U.S. Scientist Research Award from the German Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in 1992, and the Warren A. Hall Medal from the Universities Council on Water Resources in 2000. . Loucks was commissioned in the U.S. Navy in 1955. He served as an aviator on active duty until 1959 and subsequently in the Naval Reserve until 1981. From 1979 to 1981 he commanded VR-52, the largest Naval Air Transport Squadron in the country having detachments at Naval Air Facility, Detroit, MI, Andrews Air Force Base, MD, and Naval Air Station, Willow Grove, PA. In 1981 he was awarded the Navy’s Commendation Medal by the Secretary of the Navy. He retired as Captain from the Naval Reserve in 1992.