Invited Speakers

Biography: Professor Jun Liu has been Rector of City University of Macau from 2021. Prior to this position, Dr. Liu was Professor of Linguistics, Vice President and Vice Provost for Global Affairs, Dean of International Academic Programs and Services, and Founding Director of China Center at Stony Brook University. He previously served as Associate Provost for International Initiatives and Professor of Applied Linguistics at Georgia State University after his tenure at University of Arizona as Assistant Vice President, Professor, and Chair of English Department. As an international leader in the field of language education, Dr. Liu became the first Asian President of TESOL International (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc. 2006-2008) and is the recipient of the James E. Alatis Award of Outstanding Service to TESOL (2016). He is currently President of TIRF (The International Research Foundation of English Language Education). Dr. Liu has published extensively in the area of language learning and teaching, curriculum development, teacher education, and intercultural communication, including 20 books and 100 papers and book chapters. Dr. Liu has served as a reviewer and on editorial boards for many international journals and presses. A sought-after motivational speaker, Dr. Liu has given nearly 200 plenary and invited speeches in more than 30 countries to date. (Profile)

Biography: Jianda Liu is a professor and the dean of the National Key Research Center for Linguistics and Applied Linguistics at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies. He has extensive experience in designing, developing, and validating language tests in China. His research interests encompass language testing and assessment, pragmatics, and second language acquisition. He has published numerous papers in various reputable academic journals. Moreover, he has played a leading role in the development of China's Standards of English Language Ability. (Profile)

Biography: Liying Cheng (PhD) is Professor and Dean, School of Education, the City University of Macau. Prior to joining the City University of Macau, she has been Professor and Director of Assessment and Evaluation Group at the Faculty of Education, Queen’s University, Ontario, Canada. Her seminal research on washback illustrates the global impact of large-scale testing on instruction, and the relationships between assessment and instruction. Dr. Cheng focuses her research on using assessment to support student learning and teacher teaching involving linguistically and culturally diverse peoples around the world. Dr. Cheng is the Chair, Board of Trustees, the Center for Applied Linguistics, in Washington, DC. (Profile)

Biography: Dr Xi Xiaoming Madeline is the Director – Examinations, Assessment and Research. She leads the Assessment Technology and Research Division, the International and Professional Examinations Division and the Education Assessment Services Division, and is in charge of formulating strategies and policies governing research initiatives, promoting assessment for learning, conducting analytics in support of the standards of the HKDSE, operating and improving the TSA project and exploring research/business partnership and collaboration opportunities with external parties. Dr Xi is an internationally recognised expert in assessment, the interface between learning and assessment, and educational technologies including AI technologies with expertise in educational product R&D, strategy, implementation and growth. She has substantial research experience and published widely on testing, assessment, learning, and educational AI technologies. Prior to joining the HKEAA in April 2022, she had a long tenure with ETS where she was the Senior Research Director of the Centre for Language Learning and Assessment and subsequently the Executive Director, New Product Development when she left in 2020. She had then taken up the role of Chief of Product, Assessment and Learning in VIPKID. Dr Xi obtained her Doctor of Philosophy in Educational Measurement and Statistics and Language Assessment from the University of California, Los Angeles and Master of Business Administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. (Profile)

Biography: Dr. Shangchao Min is a professor at the School of International Studies, Zhejiang University, China. Her main research interests are language assessment, especially computerized language testing, language standards, and cognitive diagnostic assessment. She serves as Executive Board Member of China Association of Language Assessment and is a Nominating Committee Member of the Asian Association of Language Assessment. She also serves on the editorial board of Language Assessment Quarterly. She has published more than 30 papers in peer-reviewed academic journals such as Language Testing, Language Assessment Quarterly, Assessing Writing, Language Teaching, System, and Studies in Educational Evaluation. She has also led several projects on language assessments that are funded by British Council, China National Office for Philosophy and Social Sciences, and the Ministry of Education. (Profile)

Biography: David D. Qian was Professor of Applied Linguistics and Language Assessment and Deputy Director of the Research Centre for Professional Communication in English in the Department of English and Communication, Faculty of Humanities, Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He received his PhD in Second Language Education and Assessment from the Modern Language Centre, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto in 1998. In 2000, he joined The Hong Kong Polytechnic University after completing a TOEFL 2000 Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Research Division of the Educational Testing Service (ETS), USA, where he had worked as a Principal Investigator for two TOEFL 2000 research projects to model the relationship between the breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension in the context of developing new measures for assessing reading performance. He has published extensively in a large number of internationally refereed journals, including Assessment in Education: Principle, Policy & Practice, Canadian Modern Language Review, Chinese Journal of Applied Linguistics, Computer Assisted Language Learning, Crosslinks in English Language Teaching, Hong Kong Linguist, Language Assessment Quarterly, Language Learning, Language Testing, Language Testing in Asia, RELC Journal, System, and TESL Canada Journal. David has been a member of editorial boards of a number of top-tier international peer-refereed journals, including Language Assessment Quarterly, Language Testing, and Reading in a Foreign Language. He has edited (with Alister Cumming) a Special Issue of Language Assessment Quarterly (14, 2) on High-Stakes English Language Testing in China. David co-founded the Asian Association for Language Assessment (AALA) in 2014, served as its Co-President (2014-2015) and President (2016-2017). He has consulted for a number of institutions and government departments, including the Hong Kong Examination and Assessment Authority, Civil Service Bureau, Research Grants Council, Educational Testing Service, and Language Training and Testing Center (Profile)

Biography: Geoff LaFlair is a Lead Assessment Scientist at Duolingo where his primary responsibilities include research and development of the Duolingo English Test. Prior to joining Duolingo, he was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Second Language Studies at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa and the Director of Assessment in the Center for English as a Second Language at the University of Kentucky. He earned his PhD in applied linguistics, specializing in language assessment, corpus linguistics, and quantitative research methods, from Northern Arizona University. His research interests are situated at the intersection of applied linguistics, psychometrics, and natural language processing. It has been published in Language Testing, Applied Linguistics, The Modern Language Journal, the Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence, and Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing. (Profile)

Biography: Jirada Wudthayagorn was a recipient of the Royal Thai Government scholarship, which enabled her to earn the Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics from the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. She has received training in educational research, linguistics, and sociolinguistics. Beginning her career as a lecturer of English at Maejo University, Chiang Mai, Thailand, her portfolio included teaching language assessment, training school teachers, authoring book chapters, conducting research in language assessment and related fields, and providing consultancy on teaching, learning, and assessment to numerous Thai government agencies. Her research interests encompass English language education, language assessment, and language policy. She is now the Director of Chulalongkorn University Language Institute (CULI) in Bangkok, Thailand, and also serves as the President of Asian Association of Language Assessment (AALA). She can be reached at jirada.w@chula.ac.th. (Profile)

Biography: Cecilia Guanfang Zhao joined University of Macau in 2017 as Associate Professor of English. Previously she has taught at Ohio State University and New York University as postgraduate teaching and research fellow, and most recently at Shanghai International Studies University as Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics and Assistant to Dean in the organization of English Studies. Her research so far has focused on issues of second language writing and writing assessment, particularly the construction, development, and assessment of authorial voice in written discourse. Her work in this area appears in field-top SSCI journals and academic handbooks and encyclopedia volumes, and is recognized with two international best dissertation awards and three other national and local research paper awards. She is currently PI and Co-PI on two research grants funded by the National Social Science Research Foundation, China, and serves as manuscript reviewer for various SSCI journals, and grant/proposal reviewer for various organizations and programs such as the Changjiang Scholars Program under the Ministry of Education, China. (Profile)

Biography: Ping Li is Sin Wai Kin Professor in Humanities and Technology, Chair Professor of Neurolinguistics and Bilingual Studies, and Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He previously served as President of the Society for Computation in Psychology and Program Director at the U.S. National Science Foundation while being a Professor of Psychology, Linguistics, and Information Sciences at the Pennsylvania State University. Li’s research is focused on investigating the neurocognitive and computational bases of language acquisition, bilingualism, and reading comprehension in both children and adults. He uses digital technologies and cognitive neuroscience methods to study neuroplasticity and individual differences in learning in an effort to understand the relationships among language, culture, technology, and the brain. Li is currently Editor-in-Chief of Brain and Language and Senior Editor of Cognitive Science. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). (Profile)

Biography: Andrew Moody is a sociolinguist and specialist in ‘world Englishes’ who publishes extensively on two topics: (1) language in Macau and (2) English in popular culture.Andrew has published in journals like World Englishes, American Speech, English Language Teaching Journal and English Today, he has also contributed chapters to the following handbooks and books: The Cambridge Handbook of World Englishes, The Routledge Handbook of World Englishes, World Englishes: Critical Concepts in Linguistics (Routledge), The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics (Wiley), The Routledge International Handbook of Language Education Policy in Asia, and the Handbook of Asian Englishes (Wiley). He is the author of a chapter in both the forthcoming Routledge Handbook of EMI in Higher Education and the forthcoming Handbook of Language Policies in East Asia (Brill), as well as entries in the forthcoming Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of World Englishes. Andrew is the author of Macau’s Languages in Society and Education: Planning in a Multilingual Ecology (Springer, 2021). The volume is the first to examine the details of Macau’s multilingual language ecology throughout the territory’s nearly500-year history, first as a Portuguese enclave to the 1999 establishment of the Macau Special Administrative Region, and since. Since 2018 Andrew has served as the chief editor of the SSCI (WoS) journal English Today (Cambridge). In addition, Andrew has served as an Associate Editor of the forthcoming Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of World Englishes (expected September 2024) and the Oxford Handbook of Southeast Asian Englishes (expected April 2024). (Profile)

Biography:
Patrick C.M. Wong is Professor of Linguistics and Cognitive Neuroscience and Founding Director of the Brain and Mind Institute at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). Before moving to Hong Kong, he served on the faculty of Northwestern University for close to a decade. Wong’s research covers a wide range of basic and translational issues concerning the neural basis and disorders of language and music. Findings from this research have appeared in a broad array of interdisciplinary scholarly venues such as Nature Neuroscience, PNAS, and Science Advances. In 2021, he was named a Guggenheim Fellow for Humanities. Wong’s research has received public attention from media outlets such as The New York Times and the British Broadcasting Corporation/Public Radio International. A versatile and effective teacher, research mentor, and clinical educator, Wong is a three-time recipient of the Faculty Outstanding Teaching Award at CUHK. (Profile)

Biography:
Xin KANG is a professor and principal investigator in the Research Center for Language Cognition and Language Application at Chongqing University. She works on the cognitive, neural, and genetic bases of native and foreign language learning and processing among typical and atypical populations. She obtained her Ph.D. degree in Psychology from the University of York, UK. Before joining Chongqing University, she was a postdoctoral researcher at the Brain and Mind Institute at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. (Profile)

Biography: "Prof. Cai Zhenguang received his PhD in psychology at the University of Edinburgh. Prior to joining CUHK, he was a lecturer (equal to tenured assistant professor) in psychology at the University of East Anglia and an ESRC Future Research Leader fellow at University College London. Prof. Cai works on the psychology of language. In particular, he is interested in how people comprehend, produce and learn different aspects of language (especially lexicon, syntax and semantics), using behavioural methods (e.g., priming) complemented by neuroscientific (e.g., EEG and fMRI) and computational (Bayesian inference) techniques. He is also interested in psychophysics (i.e. how people perceive magnitude information in the outside world)." (Profile)

Biography: Ming Ming CHIU is Chair Professor of Analytics and Diversity and Director of the Analytics\Assessment Research Center, The Education University of Hong Kong. He invented (a) artificial intelligence Statistician, (b) statistical discourse analysis to model chats/conversations, (c) multilevel diffusion analysis to detect corruption in the music industry, and (d) online detection of sexual predators. His 85 grants (US$24 million) yielded 282 publications (191 journal articles; 10,000+ citations; #8 in Education in China), 15 keynote speeches, 5 television broadcasts, 17 radio broadcasts, and 188 news articles in 22 countries. He creates automatic statistical analyses for Big Data. (Profile)

Biography: Manqian (Mancy) Liao received her Ph.D. in Measurement, Statistics and Evaluation from the University of Maryland, College Park. She is a Senior Assessment Scientist at Duolingo, where her primary responsibility involves conducting validity research on the Duolingo English Test. Her current research focuses on test score quality assurance, test security, and computerized adaptive testing. (Profile)

Biography: Ricky Lam is Associate Professor in the Department of Education Studies at Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong, China. He is Associate Editor of Frontiers in Psychology and has served in several international editorial boards. His research interests include L2 writing assessment, digital portfolios, and language assessment literacy. His publications have appeared in Language Assessment Quarterly, System, Assessing Writing, Language Testing, TESOL Quarterly, RELC Journal, and other SSCI- and SCOPUS-indexed journals. Ricky is the lead author of Using Digital Portfolios to Develop Students’ Writing: A Practical Guide for Language Teachers (Routledge, 2022). Email: rickylam@hkbu.edu.hk (Profile)

Biography: Punchalee Wasanasomsithi is an associate professor at Chulalongkorn University Language Institute and currently the director of the English as an International Language Program, Graduate School, Chulalongkorn University, where she has been teaching and supervising undergraduate and graduate students for more than three dacades. She holds a doctoral degree in Language Education from Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, U.S.A. Her research interests are learner autonomy, affective factors in language learning, learning-oriented assessment, and assessment literacy. (Profile)

Raveewan Viengsang is a lecturer at Chulalongkorn University Language Institute, Bangkok, Thailand. She holds a Ph.D. in English as an International Language (EIL) from Chulalongkorn University. Her research interests are language assessment literacy, learning-oriented assessment, classroom-based assessment, and material development.

Chanisara Tangkijmongkol is a lecturer at Chulalongkorn University Language Institute, Bangkok, Thailand. She holds a Ph.D. in English as an International Language (EIL) Program from Chulalongkorn University. Her areas of interest are extensive reading, perceived self-efficacy, and curriculum and material development.

Biography: Matthew P. Wallace is an Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics in the Department of English. His current research interests include second language listening comprehension, language assessment fairness, and individual differences in language learning. He currently serves as Deputy Director of the Macau Centre for Linguistics (https://linguistics.fah.um.edu.mo/home/) and co-Director of the Language Assessment Studies Research (LASeR) Group (https://fah.um.edu.mo/laser/). His research interests include second language listening comprehension, language assessment fairness, and learner motivation. (Profile)

Biography: Dr. Di Zou is an Associate Professor at The Education University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include technology-enhanced language learning, game-based language learning, and flipped classrooms. She is an Associate Editor of the Australasian Journal of Educational Technology and an Editorial Board member of the International Journal of Mobile Learning and Organisation and has approximately 100 publications in international journals, conferences, and books. (Profile)