Catherine Lau is a Professor of Clinical Medicine at UCSF and a member of the Division of Hospital Medicine since 2009. She currently serves as the Director of Caring Wisely at UCSF Health where she focuses her efforts in redesigning and innovating systems of care at UCSF Health to improve quality, safety, value, and the patient experience. Catherine is also the Co-Director for Health Systems Improvement in the Clinical Microsystems Clerkship in the UCSF School of Medicine where she co-leads an experiential curricula for pre-clinical medical students to gain meaningful experiences in health systems improvement and A3 problem solving. Catherine serves as a UCSF School of Medicine Bridges curriculum coach, where she closely works with medical students in teaching them systems improvement skills, clinical reasoning, the patient interview, and the hypothesis-driven physical exam, while assisting them with career exploration advice. Lastly, Catherine currently serves as the Director for Recruitment and Hiring for the Division of Hospital Medicine that now has over 100 academic and clinical faculty.

Catherine is the recipient of the UCSF School of Medicine Excellence in Teaching for Clinical Faculty Award in 2022 and the UCSF Academy of Medical Educators Excellence in Teaching Award in 2023. Catherine was inducted as a member of the UCSF Academy of Medical Educators in 2024.

Catherine obtained her undergraduate degree with departmental honors from Stanford University in 2002 and received her M.D. at New York University in 2006, where she was elected to Alpha Omega Alpha and was awarded the AMWA Glasgow-Rubin Award for Excellence in Academics and Professionalism. She completed her medical residency training at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, MA before joining the Division of Hospital Medicine at UCSF in August 2009.

Catherine is the former medical director of the Nighttime Hospitalist Service, former Director for Patient Safety and Quality in the Department of Neurological Surgery, and former Director for Quality and Safety in the Division of Hospital Medicine.