Prof. Dr. Yang Liu is currently a professor of Civil Engineering in the Department of Civil and Resource Engineering at USTB. He received a Ph.D. degree in Geotechnical Engineering from Tongji University in 2006. He became a lecturer at USTB the same year and was promoted to associate professor in 2008. As a scholar, he made a one-year academic visit in cooperation with Professor C S Chang at the University of Massachusetts in 2011. He currently serves as a communication judge of the National Natural Science Foundation of China and Natural Science Foundation of Beijing, and as an independent reviewer of several journals.