Deanna Lacoste, Associate Professor, founded the Plasmas and Flames group at KAUST, in November 2016. Deanna graduated with a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of Poitiers, France, in 2002. In 2004, she joined the French CNRS as a Research Engineer at the EM2C laboratory, Ecole Centrale Paris, France. In 2014, she joined KAUST as a Research Scientist at the Clean Combustion Research Center (CCRC), and in 2016, she became an Assistant Professor of mechanical engineering. Her research mainly focuses on plasma-assisted combustion, non-equilibrium plasma discharges at atmospheric pressure, control of flame dynamics, and detonations.