Lai is an Associate Professor of Finance at the Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University. Her expertise lies in utilizing econometric models and data analytics to explore issues in financial asset pricing, market volatility and stock index arbitrage. She was given the Whitman Guttag Jr. Award and the Dean's Citation for Research and has published her research findings in leading economics and finance journals such as the Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Econometrics, and Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis.

Lai received her Ph.D. and M.A. in Economics from Duke University and B.A in Economics from Zhejiang University.