Dr. Ken Lau was born in Hong Kong and grew up in Toronto, Canada, where received his Bachelors of Science and his Ph.D. in Proteomics and Bioinformatics (2008) from the University of Toronto. After a joint postdoctoral fellowship at MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital, he was recruited to the Vanderbilt Epithelial Biology Center and the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology as a tenure-track in 2013, and was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2019, and Full Professor in 2023. Dr. Lau’s laboratory applies data-driven systems biology approaches to understand cellular specification and function in the gut. His lab develops and utilizes single-cell and spatial technologies and data science algorithms to study cellular networks. His lab is broadly interested in the interactions between epithelium and the microbiome, cell states in stem cell biology and development, and the origins of cancer.