Cheng Chen Assistant Professor Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering School of Biomedical Engineering (joint) The University of Hong Kong Office: Rm 720, Chow Yei Ching Building, HKU Email: cchen at eee.hku.hk in

Biography

I am currently an Assistant Professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the University of Hong Kong. I am the Principal Investigator (PI) of the Multimodal Health Intelligence Lab @ HKU. Before joining HKU, I was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Center for Advanced Medical Computing and Analysis, Harvard Medical School/Massachusetts General Hospital, working with Prof. Quanzheng Li. I received my Ph.D. from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, supervised by Prof. Pheng-Ann Heng. Previously, I received my M.S. from Johns Hopkins University, and B.S. from Zhejiang University, both with a specialization in biomedical engineering.

My research interests lie at the intersection of artificial intelligence and healthcare, focusing on integrating multimodal and heterogeneous medical data for precision and personalized disease diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment decision-making. Our research focus includes: 1) medical VLMs/MLLMs; 2) biomedical data generation and medical world models; 3) agentic AI systems for intelligent healthcare; 4) time-series data analysis.

*Opening!* I am actively looking for self-motivated Ph.D. students, research assistants, and visiting students to join my group. Please feel free to drop me an email (cchen@eee.hku.hk) with your CV and transcripts if you are interested. HKU students are also welcome to join our group for research projects.

News

Selected Publications [Find full list at Google Scholar]

^† indicates corresponding authorship and * indicates co-first authorship.

• REFLEX-Med: Reinforcement with Label-Free Explainability for Unified Medical Reasoning
  Luyao Tang, Zheyuan Cai, Qinong Tian, Zi Li, Quande Liu, Yue Huang, Kyongtae T Bae, Cheng Chen^†
  15th IEEE Image, Video, and Multidimensional Signal Processing Workshop (IEEE IVMSP), 2026. [Best Paper Award]
• Generalized Biomedicine Discovery
  Luyao Tang, Yingkai Yang, Hanqi Chen, Jiewei Zheng, Chaoqi Chen, Cheng Chen^†
  European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV), 2026.
• SynerMedGen: Synergizing Medical Multimodal Understanding with Generation via Task Alignment
  Weiren Zhao, Yi Dong, Cheng Chen^†
  Forty-third International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), 2026.
• CoGe-GCD: Reframing Generalized Category Discovery with Compositional Generalization
  Luyao Tang, Jiewei Zheng, Kunze Huang, Chaoqi Chen, Yue Huang, Cheng Chen^†
  Forty-third International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), 2026.
• Bures-Isotropy Alignment: Manifold Learning of Generalized Category Discovery
  Luyao Tang, Kunze Huang, Chaoqi Chen, Cheng Chen^†
  The Fourteenth International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), 2026.
• SAM-Driven Cross Prompting with Adaptive Sampling Consistency for Semi-supervised Medical Image Segmentation
  Juzheng Miao, Cheng Chen^†, Yuchen Yuan, Quanzheng Li, Pheng-Ann Heng
  Medical Image Analysis (MedIA), 2026.
• Tackling Dual-stage Missing Modalities in Brain Tumor Segmentation via Robust Modality Reconstruction and Prompt-guided Modality Adaptation
  Yunpeng Zhao*, Cheng Chen*, Qing You Pang, Yibing Fu, Quanzheng Li, Carol Tang, Beng Ti Ang, Yueming Jin
  Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), 2026.
• Mask SAM 3D for Coronary Artery and Plaque Segmentation in CCTA Images
  RenZhe Tu, CongYu Tian, LinYuan Wang, YongZhi Deng, Cheng Chen^†, WeiXin Si^†, ShanShan Wang
  International Journal of Computer Assisted Radiology and Surgery (IJCARS), 2026.
• Bridging Vision Foundation Model Priors with CLIP for Spatial-aware Few-shot Anomaly Detection in Medical Images
  Juzheng Miao, Yuchen Yuan, Cheng Chen^†, Pheng-Ann Heng
  Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI), 2026.
• Enhancing Diagnostic Accuracy in Rare and Common Fundus Diseases with a Knowledge-rich Vision-Language Model
  Meng Wang, Tian Lin, Aidi Lin, Kai Yu, Yuanyuan Peng, Lianyu Wang, Cheng Chen, et al.
  Nature Communications, 2025.
• Towards Fair Decentralized Benchmarking of Healthcare AI Algorithms with the Federated Tumor Segmentation (FeTS) Challenge
  Maximilian Zenk, Ujjwal Baid, Sarthak Pati, Akis Linardos, ..., Cheng Chen, Qi Dou, Pheng-Ann Heng, et al.
  Nature Communications, 2025. (Challenge summary)
• Multi-organ Segmentation from Partially Labeled and Unaligned Multi-modal MRI in Thyroid-associated Orbitopathy
  Cheng Chen*, Min Deng*, Yuan Zhong, Jinyue Cai, Karen Kar Wun Chan, Qi Dou, Kelvin Kam Lung Chong, Pheng-Ann Heng, Winnie Chiu-Wing Chu
  IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics (IEEE JBHI), 2025.
• GM-ABS: Promptable Generalist Model Drives Active Barely Supervised Training in Specialist Model for 3D Medical Image Segmentation
  Zhe Xu, Cheng Chen, Donghuan Lu, Jinghan Sun, Dong Wei, Yefeng Zheng, Quanzheng Li, Raymond Kai-Yu Tong
  IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging (IEEE TMI), 2025.
• MA-SAM: Modality-agnostic SAM Adaptation for 3D Medical Image Segmentation
  Cheng Chen, Juzheng Miao, Dufan Wu, Zhiling Yan, Sekeun Kim, Jiang Hu, Aoxiao Zhong, Zhengliang Liu, Lichao Sun, Xiang Li, Tianming Liu, Pheng-Ann Heng, Quanzheng Li
  Medical Image Analysis (MedIA), 2024.
• Cross Prompting Consistency with Segment Anything Model for Semi-supervised Medical Image Segmentation
  Juzheng Miao, Cheng Chen^†, Keli Zhang, Jie Chuai, Quanzheng Li, Pheng-Ann Heng
  Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI), 2024.
• Causal Effect Estimation on Imaging and Clinical Data for Treatment Decision Support of Aneurysmal Subarachnoid Hemorrhage
  Wenao Ma, Cheng Chen, Yuqi Gong, Nga Yan Chan, Meirui Jiang, Calvin Hoi-Kwan Mak, Jill M. Abrigo, Qi Dou
  IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging (IEEE TMI), 2024.
• FM-OSD: Foundation Model-Enabled One-Shot Detection of Anatomical Landmarks
  Juzheng Miao, Cheng Chen^†, Keli Zhang, Jie Chuai, Quanzheng Li, Pheng-Ann Heng
  Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI), 2024.
• FM-ABS: Promptable Foundation Model Drives Active Barely Supervised Learning for 3D Medical Image Segmentation
  Zhe Xu, Cheng Chen, Donghuan Lu, Jinghan Sun, Dong Wei, Yefeng Zheng, Quanzheng Li, Raymond Tong
  Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI), 2024.
• Contrastive Masked Image-Text Modeling for Medical Visual Representation Learning
  Cheng Chen, Aoxiao Zhong, Dufan Wu, Jie Luo, Quanzheng Li
  Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI), 2023. [Oral]
• Uncertainty Estimation for Safety-critical Scene Segmentation via Fine-grained Reward Maximization
  Hongzheng Yang*, Cheng Chen*, Yueyao Chen, Markus Scheppach, Hon Chi Yip, Qi Dou
  Thirty-seventh Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), 2023.
• SATTA: Semantic-Aware Test-Time Adaptation for Cross-Domain Medical Image Segmentation
  Yuhan Zhang, Kun Huang, Cheng Chen^†, Qiang Chen, Pheng-Ann Heng
  Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI), 2023.
• CauSSL: Causality-inspired Semi-supervised Learning for Medical Image Segmentation
  Juzheng Miao, Cheng Chen, Furui Liu, Hao Wei, Pheng-Ann Heng
  International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV), 2023.
• Treatment Outcome Prediction for Intracerebral Hemorrhage via Generative Prognostic Model with Imaging and Tabular Data
  Wenao Ma, Cheng Chen, Jill Abrigo, Calvin Hoi-Kwan Mak, Yuqi Gong, Nga Yan Chan, Chu Han, Zaiyi Liu, Qi Dou
  Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI), 2023.
• Diffusion Model based Semi-supervised Learning on Brain Hemorrhage Images for Efficient Midline Shift Quantification
  Shizhan Gong, Cheng Chen, Yuqi Gong, Nga Yan Chan, Wenao Ma, Calvin Mak, Jill Abrigo, Qi Dou
  International Conference on Information Processing in Medical Imaging (IPMI), 2023. [Oral]
• IOP-FL: Inside-outside Personalization of Federated Medical Image Segmentation
  Meirui Jiang, Yongzheng Yang, Cheng Chen, Qi Dou
  IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging (IEEE TMI), 2023.
• DLTTA: Dynamic Learning of Test-time Adaptation for Cross-domain Medical Images
  Hongzheng Yang, Cheng Chen^†, Meirui Jiang, Quande Liu, Jianfeng Cao, Pheng-Ann Heng, Qi Dou
  IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging (IEEE TMI), 2022.
• Single-domain Generalization in Medical Image Segmentation via Test-time Adaptation from Shape Dictionary
  Quande Liu, Cheng Chen, Qi Dou, Pheng-Ann Heng
  Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), 2022.
• Federated Learning Enabling Big Data for Cancer Detection
  Sarthak Pati, Ujjwal Baid, ..., Cheng Chen, et al.
  Nature Communications, 2022.
• Test-time Adaptation with Calibration of Medical Image Classification Nets for Label Distribution Shift
  Wenao Ma, Cheng Chen, Shuang Zheng, Jing Qin, Huimao Zhang, Qi Dou
  Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI), 2022.
• Learning with Privileged Multimodal Knowledge for Unimodal Segmentation
  Cheng Chen, Qi Dou, Yueming Jin, Quande Liu, Pheng-Ann Heng
  IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging (IEEE TMI), 2021.
• Source-Free Domain Adaptive Fundus Image Segmentation with Denoised Pseudo-Labeling
  Cheng Chen, Quande Liu, Yueming Jin, Qi Dou, Pheng-Ann Heng
  Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI), 2021.
• FedDG: Federated Domain Generalization on Medical Image Segmentation via Episodic Learning in Continuous Frequency Space
  Quande Liu, Cheng Chen, Jing Qin, Qi Dou, Pheng-Ann Heng
  IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), 2021.
• Unsupervised Bidirectional Cross-Modality Adaptation via Deeply Synergistic Image and Feature Alignment for Medical Image Segmentation
  Cheng Chen, Qi Dou, Hao Chen, Jing Qin, Pheng-Ann Heng
  IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging (IEEE TMI), 2020. [ESI Highly Cited Paper]
• Robust Multimodal Brain Tumor Segmentation via Feature Disentanglement and Gated Fusion
  Cheng Chen, Qi Dou, Yueming Jin, Hao Chen, Jing Qin, Pheng-Ann Heng
  Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI), 2019. [Graduate Student Travel Award]
• Synergistic Image and Feature Adaptation: Towards Cross-Modality Domain Adaptation for Medical Image Segmentation
  Cheng Chen, Qi Dou, Hao Chen, Jing Qin, Pheng-Ann Heng
  Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), 2019. [Oral; Student Scholarship]
• Semantic-Aware Generative Adversarial Nets for Unsupervised Domain Adaptation in Chest X-ray Segmentation
  Cheng Chen, Qi Dou, Hao Chen, Pheng-Ann Heng
  International Workshop on Machine Learning in Medical Imaging (MLMI), 2018. [Oral]

Patent

• Apparatus and method for motion tracking of at least a portion of a limb.
  Cheng Chen, Jim Wang.
  WO Patent WO2017005591A1, 2017.
  

Students

Current Students

• Luyao Tang (Mphil at XMU) (Ph.D. Student, 2025-)
• Zi Li (Mphil at DUT) (Ph.D. Student, 2025-)
• Weiren Zhao (BSc at UESTC) (Ph.D. Student, 2025-)
• Yi Dong (BSc at CUHK) (Ph.D. Student, 2025-)
• Yunpeng Zhao (M.Eng. at NUS) (Ph.D. Student, 2026-)
• Tianyang Cao (M.Eng. at ICL) (Ph.D. Student, 2026-)
• Xinhe Shi (BSc at ZJU) (Ph.D. Student, 2026-)

RAs/Interns

• Yanan Wang (PhD at Fudan University) (RA, 2026-)
• Shaoguang Wang (Mphil at HKUST(GZ)) (RA, 2026-) (w/ Feng Wang)
• Zean Chen (UG student at HKU) (Intern, 2026-)
• Xiaotian Hu (UG student at Beihang) (Intern, 2026-)

Honors & Awards

• 2026Best Paper Award, IEEE Image, Video, and Multidimensional Signal Processing Workshop (IEEE IVMSP)
• 2026Best Paper Award, Frames to Stories (F2S) Workshop at ICML
• 2025 & 2024World's Top 2% Scientists on Stanford List
• 2025 & 2024IEEE TMI Distinguished Reviewer, Platinum Level
• 2023Global Top 80 Chinese Young Female Scholars in Artificial Intelligence
• 2023ESI Highly Cited Paper (First author)
• 2021Winner, MICCAI Federated Brain Tumor Segmentation Challenge
• 2019AAAI Student Scholarship (First author)
• 2019MICCAI Graduate Student Travel Award (First author)

Professional Activities

Teaching