Bonnie K. Lau, Ph.D., joined the department as a research assistant professor in 2020. Dr. Lau completed her doctoral degree at the University of Washington where she studied the development of the human auditory system under the mentorship of Dr. Lynne Werner. She continued on to the University of Minnesota to obtain further training in psychoacoustics and electroencephalography (EEG) under the mentorship of Dr. Andrew Oxenham. She then returned to the Institute of Language and Brain Sciences in Seattle to explore ways of combining neurophysiological measures such as EEG, magnetoencephalography (MEG) and pupillometry to compliment behavioral data under the mentorship of Drs. Adrian KC Lee, Samu Taulu, and Patricia Kuhl. During this time, Dr. Lau also worked closely with Drs. Stephen Dager and Annette Estes and the UW Autism Center to investigate auditory processing in individuals with autism spectrum disorder.

In 2017, Dr. Lau received a National Institute of Health Pathway to Independence Award (K99/R00) to conduct a longitudinal study investigating how the cortical processing of speech develops over the first year of life in normal hearing and hard-of-hearing infants using MEG and standardized clinical measures of development.

Prior to her research training, Dr. Lau obtained an undergraduate degree in linguistics and speech science followed by clinical training in speech-language pathology. Dr. Lau has spent time working as a speech-language pathologist in pediatric hospitals in the United States and Canada as well as Uganda, Swaziland, and Bolivia – experiences that have shaped both her clinical and research interests. In her spare time, Dr. Lau enjoys snowboarding and rock climbing.