 He received awards including the 2006 Blackall Machine Tool and Gage Award from ASME (with Wenwu Zhang and I. Cev Noyan), the 2000 Outstanding Paper Award from NAMRI/SME.For his research accomplishments, he also won a Fulbright Senior Scholar Award in 2011.Yao was elected a Fellow of Laser Institute of America (LIA) in 2004, a Fellow of American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) in 2006, and a Fellow of Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) in 2008.