Dr Lai obtained her PhD in The University of Hong Kong in 2022 and was appointed as Post-doctoral Fellow in School of Public Health in 2023. She completed her Bachelor of Pharmacy in Chinese Medicine (Hons) at Hong Kong Baptist University in 2017, and Master of Research in Molecular and Cellular Biosciences at Imperial College London in 2018. Her PhD project titled “Development of a droplet-based microfluidic system for influenza infection analysis” involves molecular virology experiments and ground-breaking technique that enables single cell and single virion characterisation.

Dr Lai also conducted research on the stability and transmission of SARS-CoV-2 using in vitro and animal experiments. Her recent research focuses on the reassortment population analysis of influenza virus using single virion sequencing techniques.

1. Chin AWH, Lai AMY, Peiris M, Poon LLM. Increased Stability of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron Varian over Ancestral Strain. Emerg Infect Dis. 2022;28(7):1515-1517. doi:10.3201/eid2807.220428
2. Ma Z, Li X, Fan RLY, … Lai MYA, ... et al. A human pluripotent stem cell-based model of SARS-CoV-2 infection reveals an ACE2-independent inflammatory activation of vascular endothelial cells through TLR4. Stem Cell Reports. 2022;17(3):538-555. doi:10.1016/j.stemcr.2022.01.015
3. Nan L*, Lai MYA*, Tang MYH, Chan YK, Poon LLM, Shum HC. On-Demand Droplet Collection for Capturing Single Cells. Small. 2020;16(9):1902889. doi:10.1002/smll.201902889