Dr. Dennis Lo is a world-renowned scientist and academic leader who currently serves as the ninth Vice-Chancellor and President of The Chinese University of Hong Kong, a position he assumed on January 8, 2025. He previously held the distinguished titles of Li Ka Shing Professor of Medicine and Professor of Chemical Pathology at the same institution, where he also directed the Li Ka Shing Institute of Health Sciences and served as Associate Dean of Research for the Faculty of Medicine. Born in Hong Kong, Dr. Lo completed his undergraduate education at the University of Cambridge before pursuing his medical and doctoral degrees at the University of Oxford. Following his tenure as a faculty member at Oxford from 1994 to 1997, he returned to Hong Kong where he has made transformative contributions to medical science while advancing through the academic ranks to become the university's highest leader.
Dr. Lo is internationally celebrated as the pioneer who discovered cell-free fetal DNA in maternal plasma in 1997, a groundbreaking finding that revolutionized prenatal diagnostics and earned him recognition as the 'father of non-invasive prenatal testing.' His innovative research transformed what was once a high-risk diagnostic landscape requiring invasive procedures into a safe, accurate blood test now used globally by millions of pregnant women annually. Despite research interruptions during the 2003 SARS outbreak in Hong Kong, Dr. Lo and his team made significant contributions to virology by sequencing the SARS virus and identifying multiple viral strains. His work has received extraordinary recognition including the prestigious Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award, widely considered America's top biomedical research prize, for fundamentally changing the practice of obstetrics through non-invasive testing.
As a Fellow of the Royal Society since 2011 and an International Member of the US National Academy of Sciences since 2013, Dr. Lo has profoundly shaped the global landscape of molecular diagnostics and liquid biopsy research. He has maintained long-standing, productive collaborations with colleagues including Rossa Chiu and Allen Chan, whose partnership has enabled numerous scientific breakthroughs over decades. Dr. Lo's leadership extends beyond his laboratory, encompassing major institutional roles and significant contributions to Hong Kong's scientific community as a member of the Election Committee. In his current role as Vice-Chancellor, he continues to champion innovation in medical research while guiding one of Asia's premier universities toward new horizons of academic excellence and global impact.
