Professor Lau is the Vice-President & Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Health) and Dean of Medicine at the University of Hong Kong (HKU).
He graduated with MBChB from the University of Dundee in 1985 and in 1992, he joined HKU’s medical faculty as Lecturer in Medicine and successfully rose through the ranks to his current position as Chair and Daniel CK Yu Professor in Rheumatology and Clinical Immunology.
Professor Lau has been a major player in rheumatology in Hong Kong and beyond. Locally, he was President of the Hong Kong Society of Rheumatology (1997 – 2001) and Founding Chairman of the Hong Kong Arthritis & Rheumatism Foundation (2001). He was also the President of the Hong Kong Academy of Medicine (2016 – 2020), a statutory body for medical and dental specialist training in Hong Kong which is also a key advisory body to the HKSAR Government on health-related policies. In addition, Professor Lau sits on numerous strategic committees/working groups of the Health Bureau, Hospital Authority and Department of Health.
Regionally, Professor Lau was President of the Asia Pacific League of Rheumatology Associations (APLAR) between 2006 and 2008 and co-founder of the Asia Pacific Lupus Collaboration – a multi-national, multi-centre research collaboration.
Beyond the Asia Pacific region, he was a Member of the Outcome Measures in Rheumatology (1999 – 2002), European Alliance of Associations for Rheumatology (EULAR) Task Force on Rheumatoid Arthritis Treatment Recommendations (2019) and EULAR Scientific Committee (2019-2023). He was selected as an Honorary Member of EULAR in 2022, a member of the Academia Europaea in 2023, and conferred the degree of Doctor of Science honoris causa by the University of Glasgow in 2024. Professor Lau is Honorary Fellow of the American College of Physicians; the Academy of Medicine, Singapore; Singapore College of Physicians; Royal College of Physicians of Thailand; Academy of Medicine of Malaysia; the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland; and the Hong Kong Academy of Medicine.