SONG Jihua is currently a Professor at Beijing Normal University (BNU) and the deputy director of the Key Laboratory of Chinese Characters and Chinese Language Research and Social Application (Cultivation) under the Ministry of Education's Philosophy and Social Sciences. He concurrently serves as a member of the National Committee for Graduate Education in Chinese International Education;T the Vice Chairman of the Curriculum and Textbook Professional Committee of the International Chinese Language Teachers Association; and the executive director and president of the Modern Chinese Language Teaching Association (Hong Kong). His main research interests include information processing technology for ancient books, language resources and intelligent technology for international Chinese education, and virtual learning environments and supporting technologies inthese field. His representative monographs include Cognitive Psychology of Chinese Characters and Character Encoding  and Encyclopedia of British Education . Notable journal articles include Constructing a Hypertext-Based Knowledge Database of Shuowen Jiezi  and Theoretical Principles for the Openness of Online Courses in Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language.