Lawrence Ong received the B.Eng. degree in electrical engineering from the National University of Singapore (NUS), Singapore, in 2001. He subsequently received the M.Phil. degree from the University of Cambridge, U.K., in 2004 and the Ph.D. degree from NUS in 2008. 

Lawrence Ong was with MobileOne, Singapore, as a system engineer from 2001 to 2002. He was a research fellow at NUS, from 2007 to 2008. From 2008 to 2011, he was a postdoctoral researcher at The University of Newcastle, Australia. 

Lawrence Ong was awarded the Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) by the Australian Research Council (ARC) in 2011 (success rate: 12.8%). In 2012, he will commence the three-year DECRA fellowship (2012-2015) at The University of Newcastle.