Paul Lam studied for his Bachelor and Master's degrees at the University of Hong Kong between 1979 and 1984. He was awarded a Commonwealth Scholarship in 1984 to undertake his doctorate study at the University of Sheffield in England. He took up a Postdoctoral Fellowship at King's College, the University of London before returning to Hong Kong to take up a lecturing position at the City Polytechnic of Hong Kong in 1988. He has subsequently held tenured positions in a number of universities both in Hong Kong and overseas, including the Chinese University of Hong Kong (1990-1992) and the Victoria University in Australia (1992-1994). He joined the Department of Biology and Chemistry at the City University of Hong Kong in 1994.
