Her research interests, among others, include incorporating human perception, following the concept of Just-Noticeable-Difference or JND) psychophysical methodology, to improve multimedia, graphics and computer vision techniques. She conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Pennsylvania on 3DTV related topics. Before joining academia, she was an Information Technology executive in Lloyds Bank.
She received an Alumni Recognition Award in 2008 from the University of Alberta, and a researcher's gift fund from TCL Research America in 2014 for her R&D contributions. She also received the 2014 Outstanding Leadership Award from IEEE Communications Society MMTC. Dr. Cheng was the Chair of the IEEE Northern Canada Section, EMBS Chapter (2009-2011), Co-Chair of the IEEE System, Man and Cybernetics (SMC) Society, Human Perception in Multimedia Computing Technical Committee, and the Chair of the IEEE Communication Society, MMTC Interest Group on 3D rendering, processing and communications (2010-2012) and was the Director of the MMTC Review Board.
Among other professional organization activities, she was the General Chair in IEEE ICME 2011 and Technical Program Chair in ICME 2013. She has over 130 publications including two books and 30 journals in the last 10 years. She is also an Associate Editor of IEEE SMC Transactions on Human-Machine Systems.