Shaoying Liu holds a B.Sc and a M.Sc degree in Computer Science from Xi'an Jiaotong University, China, and a Ph.D in Formal Methods from the University of Manchester, U.K. He worked as an Assistant Lecturer and then Lecturer at Xi'an Jiaotong University, a Research Associate at the University of York, and a Research Assistant at the Royal Holloway and Bedford New College of the University of London, respectively, in the period of 1982 -- 1994. He joined the Department of Computer Science at Hiroshima City University as an Associate Professor in April 1994, and then became a faculty member of t...