Barry Luokkala is a Teaching Professor Emeritus and was the Director of Undergraduate Physics Laboratories in the Department of Physics. He also served as editor of the physics alumni newsletter, InterActions, and as curator of the Victor Bearg Physics Museum.

Luokkala was been involved in numerous outreach activities to promote science education, several of which were aimed at women and under-represented minorities. Most prominently, he served as the Director of the Pennsylvania Governor's School for the Sciences (PGSS), which he was able to revive in 2013 after a period of discontinuation. In addition, he was a consultant for such diverse institutions as the University of Pittsburgh, Chatham College, Carnegie Mellon's School of Art and School of Drama, McGraw Hill, Academic Press, Oxford University Press, and the BBC.

As a member of the faculty at Carnegie Mellon, Luokkala helped shape the introductory experimental physics course into its present form, and has created a new laboratory course for students in the pre-health professions. He also created two courses on the subject of science and science fiction: A mini-course for first-year students in the Mellon College of Science, and a full-semester course open to anyone on campus. He has been invited to speak on several occasions on various aspects of science fiction. He has been instrumental in the design of new undergraduate science laboratories. His book, Exploring Science Through Science Fiction (Springer 2014), makes science accessible to students in the nontechnical disciplines and at the same time provides enough scientific detail to also be interesting to more technically-oriented students.