Claudia KY Lai,PhD, RN, FHKCERN, FHKCGN, FAAN, is Honorary Professor at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU), Honorary Nursing Consultant at The Hong Kong Baptist University, Visiting Professor at Yangzhou University, and Visiting Professor at Kaohsiung Medical University. She has practiced nursing in Hong Kong China, Canada, and England, and worked briefly as a volunteer nurse in India. She joined the Shandong University School of Nursing and Rehabilitation as a part-time Distinguished Professor in 2021.

She has two main research programs – the care of people with dementia and their families, and the care of frail older people. She focuses on interventional and implementation research, aiming to make an impact on the health and wellbeing of humankind through changes in practice.

In 2010, she established the Health and Cognitive Assessment Service at PolyU to advance scholarship on practice. In 2012, she led her team in founding the Centre for Gerontological Nursing at PolyU, and became a member of the Global Ageing Research Network (GARN) of the International Association of Gerontology and Geriatrics (IAGG) in the same year. Under her leadership, the Centre for Gerontological Nursing at PolyU became a member of the National Hartford Center of Gerontological Nursing Excellence (NHCGNE) in 2014.

She publishes widely and won a number of research and education awards for her work on health promotion, knowledge dissemination, and dementia care. She is dedicated to the cause of dementia care and has volunteered at the Hong Kong Alzheimer’s Disease Association since 1996.

She serves as an honorary advisor to many NGOs and professional associations. A member of the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International (Sigma) since 1994, she actively participates in various task forces and was elected Sigma’s first Regional Coordinator for the Asia Region (2011-2015).

Over the course of her career, she has volunteered her time in local and international professional initiatives. Her outstanding achievements as a leader in nursing has been internationally recognized – she was inducted as a fellow of the American Academy of Nursing in 2015, and into the International Nurse Researcher Hall of Fame of Sigma in July 2018. Presently she is on the Board of NHCGNE.