Professor Colleen Lau MBBS (UWA), MPHTM (JCU), PhD (UQ), FRACGP, FACTM, FISTM is a clinician, NHMRC Fellow, and Professorial Research Fellow at The University of Queensland. She leads UQ’s program on Operational Research and Decision Support for Infectious Diseases (ODeSI). Professor Lau has a significant portfolio of research on infectious disease epidemiology and is internationally recognised for her expertise in travel medicine, vaccine preventable diseases, emerging infectious diseases, and neglected tropical diseases. Special interests include environmental drivers of infectious disease transmission, disease surveillance, spatial epidemiology, and decision support tools. Her research projects focus on answering practical questions in clinical management of infectious diseases and operational questions on improving strategies to solve public health problems, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region.
Professor Lau is a key member of CRESTMA (Clinical Research & Evidence Synthesis at Travel Medicine Alliance), which has conducted numerous impactful studies on vaccine-preventable diseases that have informed national and international policy and practice.