Kecheng Liu (born 1957) is a Chinese/British expert in organisational semiotics a professor of applied informatics at the University of Reading, and a professor of management science and engineering.
Born in Jiangsu, China, Liu received his B.A. degree in computer science in 1982 at the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In the Netherlands, he received his MSc in Decision Support Systems in 1989 at the International Institute for Aerospace Survey and Earth Sciences, and his Ph.D. in information management in 1993 at the University of Twente with a doctoral thesis entitled "Semiotics applied to information systems development".
After graduation in 1993, Liu became a faculty member at the School of Computing of the Staffordshire University. In 2003 he moved to the Department of Computer Science of the University of Reading. By 2005 he was appointed professor of informatics and e-business at the University of Reading.[1] Liu is a Fellow of British Computer Society.[1] and Fellow of Charted Institute of Management and Senior Fellow of Higher Education Academy. He is currently the Director for Strategic Initiatives, Henley Business School of the University of Reading.[2] He is the founding Head of School of Business Informatics, Systems and Accounting (2011–2016) which consists of two departments: Informatics and Systems, and Accounting and Financial Management. He also founded and is now the Honorary Director of Informatics Research Centre (2014 to date), and was Deputy Director of Technologies for Sustainable Built Environments (2009–2013), both being multidisciplinary research centres within the University of Reading. He is now mainly based in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, serving as the Executive Vice President of Wuhan College, a private university with more than 12,000 students.
He has been visiting professor at the Renmin University of China, Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Fudan University and Beijing Institute of Technology,[1] where he is also a PhD supervisor.[3] He also has had similar visiting positions at the Southeast University, Beijing Jiaotong University, Dalian University of Technology, and Shanghai University of Finance and Economics. He has been invited to deliver lectures in information systems and semiotics in China, Australia, Czech, France, Holland, Hong Kong, Portugal, Spain, Chile and Brazil. He is member of Senior Board of IBG (British Intelligent Buildings Group) and senior advisor on digital hospital in a governmental healthcare organisation in China.
Liu's research interests in early 2000s have been in the field of "requirements studies, information systems analysis and design, object methods for systems engineering, normative modelling of software agents, e-commerce systems, digital strategy and leadership."[1]
More recently, these interests has shifted towards "organisational semiotics, requirements studies, enterprise information systems management and engineering, business processing modelling, alignment of business and IT strategies, co-design of business and IT systems, pervasive informatics and intelligent spaces for working and living."[2]
Liu has authored and co-authored over 200 publications in his field of expertise.[4] [5]