Lai Fong is currently a Principal Research Associate at the UCL Energy Institute. She has a long career in health research and has achieved a national and international reputation in the field of Public Health in the development of intervention and evaluation models and methodology.  In the health area, Lai Fong has led many projects as Principal Investigator, with a cumulative funding portfolio of near £1 million. She led the qualitative component of one of the largest cluster-randomised controlled field trials in Public Health (£1.4 million) at the University of Leeds between 2010-11. Lai Fong’s expertise is in research methodology that combines innovative approaches of various kinds of qualitative and quantitative methods. It is her aim to contribute as a social scientist to the pressing issues of climate change and security of energy supply.

Lai Fong has published academic papers, book chapters, training, and health education materials on various topics related to cancer screening and minority ethnic communities and low-income groups. She was a member of the panel of referees for three NHS research programmes (National Institute for Health Research, NHS R&D Health Technology Assessment Programme, NHS Service Delivery and Organisation Programme). She was an advisory member of the WHO Task Force on Migrant friendly and Culturally Competent Hospitals and the co-ordinator of the working group on Patient and Community Empowerment of the Task Force; an advisory member of the Regional Advisory Forum of the Altogether Better project; advisory member of the ESRC project “Exploring cross-cultural value of informed choice”; member of the Race Forum of Equality Challenge Unit (ECU). Between 2007 and April, 2011, she was associate editor (health) of the Action Research Journal.

Lai Fong was an invited national and international (sometimes keynote) speaker of many national and international conferences.