Y.-C. Lai received the Air Force Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) from the White House in 1997. In the same year, he also received the Faculty Career Award from the National Science Foundation. In 1999, he was elected as a Fellow of the American Physical Society with the citation: For his many contributions to the fundamentals of nonlinear dynamics and chaos. In 2001, he served as Program Chair of Statistical and Nonlinear Physics for the APS March Meeting. In 2003, he received an NSF ITR Award. In 2008, he received the Outstanding Referee Award from the American Physical Society. In 2016 he was one of the 15 selected nationwide by the Department of Defense for the Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship, the Department of Defense's most prestigious single-investigator award that supports basic research with the potential for transformative impact (formerly known as NSSEFF – National Security Science and Engineering Faculty Fellowship). In February 2018, he was elected as a Corresponding Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (a foreign member of the National Academy of Sciences and Letters of Scotland). In July 2020, he was elected as a Foreign Member of Academia Europaea (The Academy of Europe). In November 2020, he was elected as a
Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science with the citation: For distinguished contributions to the field of nonlinear dynamics and chaos, particularly in relativistic quantum chaos and transient chaos. ==Books==