Dr. Lala holds an M.B., B.S. degree in Medicine, an M.D. (a post-graduate research degree in Medicine), and a PhD degree in Medical Biophysics, all from the Calcutta University in India.

Following a short period of teaching career in Pathology and Hematology in Calcutta University (1959-1962), Dr. Lala started his independent research career in 1963 at the Argonne National Laboratory in USA wherefrom he moved as a faculty member at the University of California Medical Centre in San Francisco (1964). In 1967, he moved to Canada initially as a research scientist at the Chalk River Nuclear Laboratories and then a faculty member at the Department of Anatomy & Cell Biology, McGill University in Montreal (1968), where he became a full professor in 1977. In 1983, he relocated to the University of Western Ontario as the Chair of the Department of Anatomy & Cell Biology (1983-1993). He is also cross-appointed at the Department of Oncology (London Regional Cancer Program), the Children's Health Research Institute and the Lawson Health Research Institute. Currently he is a Professor-emeritus with a fully active, well-funded research lab. He has trained some forty-five graduate students and twenty post-doctoral fellows many of whom are independent scientists.

Dr. Lala has published 208 peer-reviewed articles as of March 2017. He served on the editorial board of numerous reputed Biomedical journals. He received long term funding from the Medical Research Council of Canada (currently renamed CIHR) and the National cancer Institute of Canada (currently renamed CCSRI), and substantial funding from other agencies such as the NIH -USA, US-DOD (Breast Cancer Program), Lalor Foundation USA, Cancer Research Society, The Breast Cancer Society of Canada, the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation and the Ontario Institute of Cancer research.