Rate My Professor Daniel Lai

Daniel W. L. Lai is the Chair Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Hong Kong Baptist University. He earned his PhD from Case Western Reserve University. His career includes serving as Director of the Institute of Active Ageing and Head of the Department of Applied Social Sciences at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University from 2016 to 2020. Prior to that, he was Professor and Associate Dean (Research & Partnership) in the Faculty of Social Work at The University of Calgary. He began his career as a social worker and has held teaching positions at higher education institutions in Hong Kong and Canada.

Professor Lai's research specializations include gerontology, healthy aging, caregiving, mental health, community development, cross-cultural practice, immigration, culture and ethnicity, outcome evaluation, lifelong learning, intergenerational relationships, and the mental health of older people and ethnic minorities. With over 300 research outputs, including 170 journal articles, his work has earned him recognition as one of the World's Top 2% Scientists in public health and health services. Notable publications are "Effectiveness of a peer-based intervention on loneliness and social isolation of older Chinese immigrants in Canada: A randomized controlled trial" (2020, 83 citations), "To be or not to be: relationship between grandparent status and health and wellbeing" (2021), "Hopes and Wishes of Clients with Mental Illness in Hong Kong" (2021), and "The experience of growing old in chronic mental health patients" (2020). In 2024, he was appointed the Fung Hon Chu Endowed Professor in Humanics. He serves as Vice-President of the Hong Kong Association of Gerontology, member of the Elderly Commission of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, and on editorial boards for journals like Educational Gerontology and Interdisciplinary Nursing Research. Previously, he was on the boards of the American Society on Aging and Canadian Association of Gerontology.