Kecskes Istvan (1947–2025), Distinguished Professor at SUNY, was a highly influential scholar in pragmatics and bilingualism. He authored groundbreaking works, including Intercultural Pragmatics (2014) and English as a Lingua Franca (2019). He was also the esteemed founding editor of the journals Intercultural Pragmatics and Chinese as a Second Language Research. Zhao Yang is Boya Distinguished Professor and Dean of the School of Chinese as a Second Language at Peking University. He earned a PhD in Chinese linguistics from Cambridge. His work in SLA, generative grammar and sociolinguistics has yielded key publications. He holds leadership roles in Chinese and International language teaching and acquisition associations.