Professor Lo is the Li Ka Shing Professor of Medicine of The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) and the President of the Hong Kong Academy of Sciences. His research interests focus on the biology and diagnostic applications of cell-free nucleic acids in plasma. In particular, he discovered the presence of cell-free fetal DNA in maternal plasma in 1997 and has since then been pioneering non-invasive prenatal diagnosis using this technology. This technology has been adopted globally and has created a paradigm in prenatal medicine. He has also made many innovations using circulating nucleic acids for cancer detection, including the screening of early stage nasopharyngeal cancer.
In recognition of his research, Professor Lo has been elected as Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Founding Member of the Hong Kong Academy of Sciences, Fellow of the Royal Society and Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Sciences. Professor Lo has won numerous awards, including the 2014 King Faisal International Prize in Medicine, the 2016 Future Science Prize in Life Science, the 2019 Fudan-Zhongzhi Science Award, the 2021 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, the 2021 Royal Medal, the 2021 ESHG Mendel Award, the 2022 ISPD Pioneer Award, the 2022 Lasker~DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award, the 2023 inaugural Tengchong Science Prize and the 2024 Jiménez Díaz Lecture Award.