Professor Buck is a native of Los Angeles, CA. He completed the B.S. in engineering from UCLA in 1975. He received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in engineering from the University of California at Berkeley in 1977 and 1982, respectively. His thesis work centered on nonlinear optical four-wave mixing.

At Georgia Tech, Dr. Buck has conducted research in ultrafast switching, radiation of short electrical pulses, nonlinear optical materials characterization, fiber amplifier modeling, and optical soliton propagation, with applications for all in optical communications. He has developed courses and textbooks on fiber optics, nonlinear optics, and electromagnetics.

Dr. Buck's hobbies include music and photography.