Prof. F. Anthony Lai received his B.Sc. and A.R.C.S. degrees in Chemistry & Biochemistry from Imperial College London, and also his Ph.D. and D.I.C. degrees in Biochemistry from Imperial College London, UK, followed by research training at the Cambridge Biomedical Campus. From 1986, he conducted research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA, as the Carl M. Pearson Fellow of the Muscular Dystrophy Association USA. In 1990, he became a faculty of the UK Medical Research Council at the National Institute for Medical Research in London, UK. After joining Cardiff University School of Medicine in 1998 as a Professor in Cardiovascular Cell Signaling, he subsequently also accepted the concurrent responsibility as Chair of the Wales Heart Research Institute in 2001 and the Head of the Department of Cardiology in 2004. He took up his present position as Professor of Molecular Cell Biology at the College of Medicine, Qatar University, in 2017, where he has the role of Head of Research. His research interests are in understanding the cell calcium signaling systems that underpin fundamental biomedical mechanisms, the dysfunction of which results in various pathologies ranging from infertility (mediated by sperm PLC-zeta) to dementia to sudden cardiac death (mediated by ryanodine receptor calcium channel).
