Before joining the academia, he worked as a Language Assessment Specialist and Research Lead at Paragon Testing Enterprises Inc., BC, Canada. He holds a PhD degree in the applied linguistics and technology from Iowa State University, USA and an MA degree in applied linguistics from Hunan University, China. From 2010-2015, he worked at Iowa State University as a research/teaching assistant, and prior to that, he was a full-time lecturer at Hunan University of Arts and Science, China. His research interests include language assessment, computer-assisted language learning, corpus linguistics, and systemic functional linguistics. He has presented his work at a number of professional conferences such as AAAL, LTRC, and TESOL. His research papers have been published in System and Language Learning &Technology.