Biography
Petrina Yau Pok Lau is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and a Group Leader at the Gerald Choa Neuroscience Institute at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. She received her DPhil in Neuroscience from the University of Oxford, where she was trained by Prof. Peter Somogyi and Dr. Karri Lamsa. She discovered novel in vivo anti-Hebbian plasticity mechanisms. She subsequently held postdoctoral fellowships at the MRC Harwell Institute and research associate positions at University College London, during which she developed expertise in genetic mouse models screening and brain-wide circuit mechanisms underlying prior-dependent decision-making through her involvement in the International Mouse Phenotyping Consortium and the International Brain Laboratory.
Dr Lau’s research programme integrates systems and computational neuroscience to investigate how genetic predisposition, neural circuit dysfunction, and environment stimuli give rise to pathological brain states across psychiatric disorders. Her group combines high-density in vivo functional measurements, cell-type-specific manipulations, computation modelling, and multimodal machine learning to characterise dynamic transitions between neurotypical and pathological brain states. Her work also examines how neural circuits interact with gut microbiota, environmental influences, and physiological stressors to shape psychiatric outcomes.
Her team’s research spans three interconnected areas: unconventional signalling and computational simulation in health and disease; brain-wide neural network dynamics and their disruption in neuropathology; and multimodal analyses linking longitudinal symptom trajectories across patient subgroups to underlying circuit changes. These efforts are grounded in clinical need, with the long-term goal of developing circuit-level biomarkers for psychiatric diagnosis and biologically informed subtype specific precision medicine. Dr Lau’s work is supported by HATCH, GCNI, the Wellcome Trust, UKRI, and the Simons Foundation, and has been published in leading journals including Nature, Nature Neuroscience, and Neuron.
Petrina LAU
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry
Research Interests
- Biological mechanisms underlying neurodevelopment disorders
- Circuit-based neuropathological states transition
- Multi-modal AI development
- Cross-species translation
- Computation psychiatry
Awards
| 2025 | Neuron2026 Symposium Award | Japanese Neuroscience Society. |
| 2023 | NWB Hackathon Award. | The Kavli Foundation |
| 2015-2020 | Postdoctoral Training Fellowship | Medical Research Council, UK. |
| 2019 | IBRO Travel Award | FENS, EU. |
| 2019 | Guarantors of Brain Travel Award | Guarantors of Brain, UK. |
| 2019 | The Carl Storm Diversity Fellowship | Gordon Research Conference. |
| 2019 | Recognition Award for Public engagement | Medical Research Council |
| 2018 | The 41st Japanese Neuroscience Society Annual Meeting Travel Award | Japanese Neuroscience Society |
| 2017 | Special Award Scheme Award | Medical Research Council, UK. |
| 2017 | Travel Award for the 19th Annual Meeting of The International Behavioural and Neural Genetics Society | Genes, Brain and Behavior Society, Madrid, Spain. |
Selected publications
- International Brain Laboratory, Bayer, H. M., Birman, D., Chapuis, G., Witt, E. E. J., Freitas-Silva, L., Langdon, C., Laranjeira, I., Lau, P., Paninski, L., Picard, S., Tessereau, C., Urai, A. E., Whiteway, M. R., & Winter, O. (2026). 20 lessons in team science: Learning from the experience of the International Brain Laboratory. Neuron, 114(6), 980–984.
- Bruijns, S. A., Bougrova, K., Laranjeira, I. C., Lau, P. Y. P., Meijer, G. T., Miska, N. J., Noel, J.-P., Pan-Vazquez, A., Roth, N., Socha, K. Z., Urai, A. E., & Dayan, P. (2026). Dissecting the complexities of learning with infinite hidden Markov models. Nature Neuroscience, 29, 186–194.
- Findling, C., Hubert, F., Acerbi, L., Benson, B., Benson, J., Birman, D., Bonacchi, N., Carandini, M., Catarino, J. A., Chapuis, G. A., Churchland, A. K., Dan, Y., DeWitt, E. E. J., Engel, T. A., Fabbri, M., Faulkner, M., Fiete, I. R., Freitas-Silva, L., Gerçek, B., Harris, K. D., Häusser, M., Hofer, S. B., Hu, F., Huntenburg, J. M., Khanal, A., Krasniak, C., Langdon, C., Latham, P. E., Lau, P. Y. P., Mainen, Z., Meijer, G. T., Miska, N. J., Mrsic-Flogel, T. D., Noel, J.-P., Nylund, K., Pan-Vazquez, A., Paninski, L., Pillow, J., Rossant, C., Roth, N., Schaeffer, R., Schartner, M., Shi, Y., Socha, K. Z., Steinmetz, N. A., Svoboda, K., Tessereau, C., Urai, A. E., Wells, M. J., West, S. J., Whiteway, M. R., Winter, O., Witten, I. B., Zador, A., Dayan, P., & Pouget, A. (2025). Brain-wide representations of prior information in mouse decision-making. Nature, 645(8079), 192–200.
- Benson, B., Benson, J., Birman, D., Bonacchi, N., Carandini, M., Catarino, J. A., Chapuis, G. A., Churchland, A. K., Dan, Y., Dayan, P., DeWitt, E. E. J., Engel, T. A., Fabbri, M., Faulkner, M., Fiete, I. R., Findling, C., Freitas-Silva, L., Gerçek, B., Harris, K. D., Häusser, M., Hofer, S. B., Hu, F., Hubert, F., Huntenburg, J. M., Khanal, A., Krasniak, C., Langdon, C., Lau, P. Y. P., Mainen, Z. F., Meijer, G. T., Miska, N. J., Mrsic-Flogel, T. D., Noel, J.-P., Nylund, K., Pan-Vazquez, A., Pouget, A., Rossant, C., Roth, N., Schaeffer, R., Schartner, M., Shi, Y., Socha, K. Z., Steinmetz, N. A., Svoboda, K., Urai, A. E., Wells, M. J., West, S. J., Whiteway, M. R., Winter, O., & Witten, I. B. (2025). A brain-wide map of neural activity during complex behaviour. Nature, 645(8079), 177–191.
- International Brain Laboratory, Kanga, B., Benson, J., Bhagat, J., Biderman, D., Birman, D., Bonacchi, N., Bruijns, S. A., Buchanan, K., Campbell, R. A. A., Carandini, M., Chapuis, G. A., Churchland, A. K., Davatolhagh, M. F., Lee, H. D., Faulkner, M., Gerçek, B., Hu, F., Huntenburg, J., Hurwitz, C. L., Khanal, A., Krasniak, C., Lau, P., Langfield, C., Mackenzie, N., Meijer, G. T., Miska, N. J., Mohammadi, Z., Noel, J.-P., Paninski, L., Pan-Vazquez, A., Rossant, C., Roth, N., Schartner, M., Socha, K. Z., Steinmetz, N. A., Svoboda, K., Taheri, M., Urai, A. E., Wang, S., Wells, M., West, S. J., Whiteway, M. R., Winter, O., Witten, I. B., & Zhang, Y. (2025). Reproducibility of in vivo electrophysiological measurements in mice. eLife, 13, RP100840.
- Donà, E., Gahan, J. M., Lau, P. Y. P., Jeschke, J., Ott, T., Reinhard, K., Sinigaglia, C., Treur, J. L., Vogl, T., Bugeon, S., Mariotti, L., Rossi, L. F., & Coen, P. (2025). The SAFE Labs Handbook as a tool for improving lab culture. eLife, 14, e108853.
- Banks, G. T., Guillaumin, M. C. C., Heise, I., Lau, P., Yin, M., Bourbia, N., Aguilar, C., Bowl, M. R., Esapa, C., Brown, L. A., Hasan, S., Tagliatti, E., Nicholson, E., Bains, R. S., Wells, S., Vyazovskiy, V. V., Volynski, K., Peirson, S. N., & Nolan, P. M. (2020). Forward genetics identifies a novel sleep mutant with sleep state inertia and REM sleep deficits. Science Advances, 6, eabb3567.
- Lamsa, K., & Lau, P. (2019). Long-term plasticity of hippocampal interneurons during in vivo memory processes. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 54, 20–27.
- Banks, G., Lassi, G., Hoerder-Suabedissen, A., Tinarelli, F., Simon, M. M., Wilcox, A., Lau, P., Lawson, T. N., Johnson, S., Rutman, A., Sweeting, J., Chesham, J. E., Barnard, A. R., Horner, N., Westerberg, H., Smith, L. B., Molnar, Z., Hastings, M. H., Hirst, R. A., … Nolan, P. M. (2018). A missense mutation in Katnal1 underlies behavioural, neurological and ciliary anomalies. Molecular Psychiatry, 23, 713–722.
- Lau, P. Y., Katona, L., Saghy, P., Newton, K., Somogyi, P., & Lamsa, K. P. (2017). Long-term plasticity in identified hippocampal GABAergic interneurons in the CA1 area in vivo. Brain Structure and Function, 222, 1809–1827.
