Raised in Webster, New York, to a Chinese family. Lu attended R. L. Thomas High School, where he was a member of the wrestling team and graduated in 1980. Later, Lu earned a degree in electrical engineering from Cornell University where he lettered in wrestling. He then received a doctoral degree in applied physics from Stanford University in 1989. Lu is a member of the Psi chapter of Pi Kappa Phi fraternity at Cornell.

Lu is a specialist in solar physics and did postdoctoral work at the Institute for Astronomy in Honolulu, Hawaii before being selected for the NASA Astronaut Corps in 1994.

Lu flew on space shuttle missions STS-84 in 1997 and STS-106 in 2000, in which he carried out a six-hour spacewalk to perform construction work on the International Space Station. Having been flight engineer on Soyuz TMA-2, Lu spent six months in space in 2003 as part of ISS Expedition 7 , with cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko.

In his spare time while at NASA, Lu founded the B612 Foundation whose goal is to be able to significantly alter the orbit of an asteroid, in a controlled manner, by 2015.

While on the Space Station, Ed Lu teamed up with Magician James Randi (founder of JREF) to perform a card trick in outer space. Randi asked Lu to (without looking) select a card from the middle of a brand new freshly shuffled deck of cards, turn it around and reinsert the card into the deck the opposite direction. Then place the deck of cards back into its box then take them out again and fan the cards to the camera. This same procedure was being done by Randi back on Earth at the JREF headquarters in front of witnesses from the Miami Herald. Both Randi and Lu successfully selected the same card, the seven of diamonds. The remaining cards were jettisoned for weight reasons before returning to Earth, but Lu smuggled the card home. The two cards complete with autographs are framed for public view at the JREF offices in Fort Lauderdale, FL. Randi asks Lu "What are the odds that we would both choose the same card?" Lu answers "Knowing you and your tricky ways, the odds were one in one, because it's a trick!"

On August 10, 2007, Lu announced he was retiring from NASA to work at Google.

In June 2010, Lu left Google and is now working out of Sunfire Offices.

• NASA biography

• Dr. Lu's Space Blog written from during Expedition 7

• Spacefacts biography of Ed Lu