Zhongwei Shen received his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in linguistics. Research interests include the mechanism of sound change, early history of Mandarin seen in ancient non-Chinese scripts, formation of Chinese dialects. The books he published include Studies on the Menggu Ziyun (2008) and Exploring the Dynamic Aspect of Sound Change (1997). The books he edited and co-edited include Diachronic Studies of the Wu Dialect Studies (2011), Synchronic Studies of the Wu Dialect Studies (2011), The Joy of Linguistic Research II, A Festschrift for Prof. William S-Y. Wang’s 75th Birthday (2010), The Joy of Linguistic Research, A Festschrift for Prof. William S-Y. Wang’s 70th Birthday (2004). His recently published articles include “Wu ‘voiced’ stops - A cross-language study” (2011), “The origin of Mandarin” (2011), “Exploring the on-going sound changes in the historical document” (2010), “A study of the rhymes in the Khitan lesser script” (2009), “Apicalization and its related changes before and after the Menggu Ziyun”. (2008), “Language shift and dialect substratum” (2007), “Sino-Khitan phonology” (2007), “The phonological characteristics of the northern Chinese dialect of the Liao time” (2006), and “The syllabic nasals in the Chinese dialects” (2006).