In 2009, Lu began her independent career at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities as an assistant professor in the department of chemistry. She was promoted to associate professor with tenure in 2015, and full professor in 2020. She moved her laboratory to the University of Bonn in 2022.
Her research focuses on the synthesis and characterization of bimetallic complexes, especially those that contain a metal-metal bond. The Lu group has developed a series of trianionic, tripodal ligands that can coordinate two metals at close proximity, allowing for the formation for a metal-metal bond in a coordination complex. The metal-metal bond order can range from bond orders of less than one to a quintuple bond, as between manganese and chromium in a complex reported in 2013, and between two chromium atoms in a complex reported in 2015.
These coordination complexes are also active for catalytic reactions of small molecules, such as the silylation of nitrogen by a dicobalt complex, and alkene hydrogenation by nickel-group 13 element complexes.