Lau Lung Wai (Alison) is a designer and researcher working at the intersection of fashion and biomaterials. She did her fashion design BA in London and began her career as a fashion and costume designer, with projects spanning garment design, photography, and art direction.

In 2025, she established Throo Lab, where she develops lab-cultivated biotextiles made from algae and nanocellulose. Her interest in biomaterials grew from a search for transparency in textiles. She wishes to tell the story of oneness, that everything in the world is connected. She searched for transparent materials that reflected that but couldn't. That led her to build her own textile from the molecule up.

Within the biomaterials field, much work has centered on producing substitutes for existing products such as leather or plastic. Alison takes a different path by focusing on the material’s own properties. She works with organic cellulose not to imitate but to highlight its natural transparency, textures, and potential as a category of its own.

For Alison, Throo represents permeation: passing through, going through, and seeing through. Her work brings art and science together, connecting material research with new directions for sustainable design.