Robert Lai

Robert Yih-shyong Lai (July 24, 1940 – April 30, 2018) was a Taiwanese-American engineer who specialized in fluid mechanics.

After completing his post-doctoral work at SUNY Buffalo in 1969, Lai began his decade long teaching career at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee in 1970. In 1975, Lai became involved in the formation of the North American Taiwanese Professors Association (NATPA)—later becoming vice president and managing publications and editing—and by 1980 he had left his teaching post at the University of Wisconsin to pursue a career at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL). While continuing his work at NATPA, Lai took on the role as senior engineer at TRW Inc.

Lai would later return to Taiwan with his naval engineering expertise, becoming senior advisor to the National Defense Industry Association in 2005 and chairman of the National Applied Research Laboratories (NARL) in 2006.

Lai would eventually return to Washington, D.C. as the chairman of the Global Taiwan Institute (GTI) from 2016 until his death in 2018. Provided by Wikipedia