Dr. Liang Cheng has been an interdisciplinary scholar and entrepreneurial leader in academia for more than two decades. He will be the next Dean of the School of Engineering at the Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.

Dr. Cheng led the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Toledo (an R1 institution) as Department Chair and Professor in the past five years. The EECS Department has over 600 undergraduate, Master’s and Ph.D. students majoring in Computer Science, Computer Science and Engineering, and/or Electrical Engineering on two campuses. The department has developed new major, minor, concentration, certificate and international partnership programs, nearly doubled the extramural research funding, and received significant donations supporting scholarship and education such as an endowed professorship and a new Senior Design lab since July 2021. He was also a Co-Acting Chair of the Engineering Technology Department, overseeing Computer Science and Engineering Technology, Cyber Security, Electrical Engineering Technology, and Information Technology programs (~300 students). He also chaired the AI Curriculum Subcommittee of the University of Toledo in the past two years.

During his tenure at Lehigh University, Dr. Cheng served as a Faculty Senator and a Faculty Tri-Chair of Council for Equity and Community. His leadership in changing Rules and Procedures of the Faculty to add new categories of faculty (e.g. Research Faculty and Teaching Faculty) with their rights and responsibilities defined and in updating the Bylaws of the Council for Equity and Community to include the representation of Professor of Practice impacted the long-term development of the university and enhanced the climate of the university.

Dr. Cheng has led more than 20 sponsored research projects and been PI or Co-PI of expert teams for over $30M in funding from a variety of sources, including DARPA, DOE, DOT, NSF, state agencies, and industry. His expertise spans AI/ML applications, CPS (e.g. autonomous drones [DeepFlyer] and energy systems), Cybersecurity, Intelligent Infrastructure (e.g. transportation systems and underground sensing), Middleware, and Networking. He co-edited a book on Underground Sensing by orchestrating a multidisciplinary team of researchers from 20 universities and institutes in 6 countries. He has been a keynote speaker and a panelist for academic conferences/workshops and a judge for business pitch competitions.