He has been interested in the research problems in the areas of supply chain management, operations/finance, operations/marketing, and healthcare. He has published 19 articles in the journals of Management Science, Operations Research, MSOM, POM and several others. Professor Lai received his PhD degree and master's degree in Operations Management from Carnegie Mellon University. He also earned a master's degree and a bachelor's degree in Control Engineering from Tsinghua University in China.