Prof Colleen Lau is a clinician and infectious disease epidemiologist at the University of Queensland School of Public Health. Her areas of expertise include neglected tropical diseases, emerging infectious diseases, vaccine preventable diseases and clinical travel medicine. Her wide range of research interests include infectious disease epidemiology, spatial epidemiology and disease mapping, infectious disease surveillance and elimination, vaccinations, travel health, environmental health, electronic data, and digital decision support tools.

Professor Lau's research projects focus on answering practical questions in clinical management of infectious diseases and operational questions on improving strategies to solve public health problems. Examples of projects include operational research on lymphatic filariasis elimination, sero-epidemiology of arboviruses, predictive risk mapping of leptospirosis, malaria chemoprophylaxis in travellers, and risk-benefit analysis of COVID-19 vaccines.