John Lu grew up in northern Anhui Province, China before he went to Beijing to study at the Peking University where he received a BS in mathematics with specialization in probability and statistics in 1986. He came to the US to study at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and received MS and PhD in statistics, under the guidance of Richard L. Smith. He was a visiting scientist at National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Boulder, Colorado, where he did post-doctoral research on applying Bayesian statistics to atmospheric sciences under the mentorship of professor Mark Berliner from the Ohio State University. He spent a year as a visiting assistant professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in Kowloon, Hong Kong, China in 1997-1998.

He was a research scientist doing S-plus statistical software development and research from 1999-2001. He has been at NIST as a mathematical statistician since July 2001. His main research activity has been in interdisciplinary statistical research, working closely with other discipline scientists to address various measurement science problems arising from physical, phantom, or medical products. His experiences of consulting and research cut across many application areas including climatology, material sciences, biotechnology, chemical sciences, information technology, manufacturing, and physical sciences.