“I believe engineering is about developing solutions for society that enhance or improve our lives,” said Xiangyi Cheng, Loyola Marymount University assistant professor of mechanical engineering. “The areas of health care and education are important to, and affect, a broad segment of the population. Nearly everyone has experiences within health care and education, which is why I like to target these two areas specifically in my research.”
In a way, engineering is part of Cheng’s heritage. While her father is an engineer in the field of mining in their native China, she is drawn to emerging and innovative technologies. “I found my own path in teaching and research focused on developing novel robotics and human-computer interaction systems enhanced by AI technologies, including computer-vision and machine learning,” said Cheng.
Cheng’s workplace values align with LMU’s mission to encourage learning, a holistic approach to education, service of faith, and promotion of justice. “It was important the university also values a small class setting, which allows me to really get to know my students,” she said. “Most importantly, I wanted to teach at LMU because of its focus on the teacher-scholar model—balanced by 40% teaching, 40% research, and 20% service.”
She has already engaged three students in her research projects focused on technologies and applications in robotics, augmented reality, and intelligent systems. Her aim is to enhance human-computer interaction and deliver innovative solutions, particularly in the fields of health care and education.
One important application her research addresses is for syndactyly surgery. Syndactyly is a condition in which children are born with fused or webbed fingers. A challenge surgeons face when performing this surgery is determining how much skin, and in what shape, is needed for skin grafts once the digits are surgically separated and the web space between the fingers is reconstructed. Cheng’s collaborative research aims to build an autonomous solution that extracts geometric features from a dorsal flap to optimize its dimensions and shape using Finite Element Analysis – a computer-aided engineering technique to predict how something will perform under real-world conditions. “We want to find a quantitative way through these calculations to determine the optimal amount and shape of skin required for syndactyly surgery, especially given the variety of hand shapes and sizes among patients,” Cheng explains. “We believe this approach could have applications in other types of plastic surgery. “I want to keep developing devices for the augmentation of medical approaches or assessment.”
Another research project focuses on enhancing the educational experience within robotics. It centers on developing and evaluating an Augmented Reality (AR) application using HoloLens 2, a mixed-reality device by Microsoft that uses holographic computing to create an immersive experience for users. This application projects digital coordinate frames onto the links of an actual robotic arm, greatly facilitating the 3D comprehension of the Denavit-Hartenberg (D-H) convention, which is used to calculate kinematics and dynamics of robots. “The objective is to apply the AR headset to identify the links on a robotic arm, affix D-H frames to them, and automatically adjust the frames to the arm’s movements, thereby enhancing students’ spatial understanding,” Cheng explains.
She is currently teaching Introduction to Engineering and Capstone Projects. Prior to joining LMU, Cheng was an assistant professor at Ohio Northern University and a teaching fellow at Texas A & M University. Cheng earned a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Texas A & M University and a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from China University of Mining and Technology in Beijing. She also began her graduate studies at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio before following her Ph.D. advisor who transferred to join the faculty at Texas A & M.
