Vale A/Professor Phyllis Min-yü Lau

It is with enormous sadness that we announce the passing of our dear colleague, Phyllis Lau on Sunday 9^th November 2025.

Phyllis was a valued member of our Department with a strong reputation for the energy, passion and enthusiasm she put into all her work. She was a force, determined to build primary care research.

She commenced working in our Department 20 years ago as a Research Assistant, not long after she completed her PhD at Monash on adverse drug reactions in oncology. Prior to this she had completed a Bachelor of Pharmacy and a Graduate Diploma in Drug Evaluation and Pharmaceutical Sciences. She grew to become the Deputy Lead of the Diabetes and Cardiometabolic Disease Research Group (2014 to 2020). From 2014 until the present she has been Graduate Research Coordinator assisting Professor Meredith Temple-Smith with research training and mentoring of GR students. She was one of the first academics in our Department to undertake research with the Aboriginal Community and collaborators to improve the cultural safety of general practice, and she was a Closing the Gap Consultant for General Practice Victoria in 2012. She later went on to developed cultural awareness programs for medical students. From her first position in our Department, she become the Statewide Co-ordinator of the Primary Health Care Research, Evaluation and Development Program (2006-7), which provided federal funding to promote primary care research. This gave her the opportunity to both broaden her research interests and attend conferences held by the Australian Association of Academic Primary Care.  She later went on to serve this national organisation in a number of roles, including Treasurer (2016-19), Vice President (2019-20) and then President from 2020 to 2023.

Phyllis moved to Western Sydney University School of Medicine in the COVID years from 2021. She was soon promoted to Associate Professor. She maintained her fractional appointment with our Department as the Graduate Research Coordinator and student/supervisor mentor. She also held an Honorary Associate Professorship in the Melbourne Dental School with which she had a strong collaboration around oral health.

She was the convenor for the AAAPC Annual Research Conference in 2024, which was an excellent conference. Phyllis was passionate about primary care research for all - medical, nursing, allied health and pharmacy as well as for non-clinical primary care researchers - and she was a strong advocate for inter-professional collaboration. Recently she was a driver to establish a Practice Based Research Network for NSW and was thus the founder and was the first Committee Chair of the NSW-ACT Practice-based Research Alliance (NAPRA) 2024.

Phyllis successfully supervised very many research projects and students in the areas of her interests, which included health service delivery, Indigenous health, cultural sensitivity in health communication, interprofessional collaboration in care and research and chronic disease detection and management. She has been awarded more than $17M in research funding over the years from National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) and Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP). In 2025 alone, she was a Chief Investigator on four newly successful grants including two funded by the Medical Research Futures Fund (MRFF). She has over 100 publications.

A major contributor to the training of honours, medical and graduate research students, Phyllis was an excellent advocate and mentor for students – she always went the extra mile. Even as she faced her own health challenges, she sought funding for and established GR-Connect for our Department. This initiative aims to maintain the connection between graduate research students and our Department and provides networking, mentoring and internship opportunities for current students in the Department by linking them with former students.

For several years pre-COVID, she led our international observership program, which encouraged novice primary care practitioners from overseas to learn from the Australian experience. She not only delivered introductory research training in these short courses, often in Mandarin, but maintained research connections with these practitioners on their return home.

Phyllis’ impact will be felt for years to come - in the careers she helped shape and through the inspiration she provided to all who had the privilege of working with her and seeing her passion. Her warmth and hospitality was legendary. Who can forget her amazing Chinese New Year’s morning teas in the old building?

Even over the last year, whenever able, she kept working at her usual double-time pace. Her enthusiasm was infectious and we will miss her bright smile.  During her fight with pancreatic cancer, Phyllis was supported by husband, Raymond, sons Nick, Quillan and Owain, Nick’s wife Ada and grandson August. Our thoughts are with them and her close colleagues at the University of Western Sydney.

We will miss you.

Prof Meredith Temple-Smith and Prof Lena Sanci