Biography
Prof. CHEUNG Chi Kwan Vincent (張智鈞) A neuroscientist and biomedical engineer, Vincent C. K. Cheung is Associate Professor at the School of Biomedical Sciences of The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). He obtained his B. Sc. in Mathematics and Pharmacology & Therapeutics from The University of British Columbia, Ph. D. in Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering from MIT and Harvard Medical School, and postdoctoral training from the MIT McGovern Institute for Brain Research. Prof. Cheung’s research focuses on understanding how the central nervous system controls voluntary movement and translating this knowledge into new neuro-rehabilitation strategies. His research has been supported by the Hong Kong Research Grants Council and other sponsors. His articles have appeared in Nature Communications, PNAS, Journal of Neurophysiology, and multiple IEEE journals. He was invited to speak at professional conferences, events for the general audience (e.g., TEDxCUHK), and local radio programmes. Prof. Cheung was Chair of the Hong Kong-Macau Chapter of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (2018-19). Recipient of the MIT Angus MacDonald Teaching Award (2006) and Teachers of the Years Award of CUHK Medicine (2021, 2022), Prof. Cheung has directed courses in neuroscience, human anatomy and physiology.
Vincent CHEUNG
Associate Professor, School of Biomedical Sciences
Dean of Students, C. W. Chu College
Research Interests
- Neural control of movement
- Motor learning, motor development, post-injury recovery
- Neuro-rehabilitation
- Movement disorders
- Novel neural technologies
- Neuroinformatics and algorithms for neural data analysis
- Biomechanics
- Brain stimulation and brain mapping
Awards
- 2022 Teachers of the Years Award, Faculty of Medicine, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
- 2021 Teachers of the Years Award, Faculty of Medicine, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Selected publications
- Xie JJ, Huang S, Lau KYS, Kong AH, Chan RHM, Woo PYM, Cheung VCK* (2025). Neuromotor Modules Revealed by Intraoperative Direct Electrical Stimulation of the Human Primary Motor Cortex. medRxiv 2025-10.
- Guo X, Lau KYS, Bai M, Liu R, He B, Xie JJ, Lin J, Yuen VKH, Chan PPK, Law SLS, Wang J, Li SM, Chou C-H, Chen C-Y, Cheing GLY, Kwong PWH, Lan N, Cheung RTH, Chan RHM, Cheung VCK* (2025). Personalized synergy-based functional electrical stimulation improves lower limb motor functions of chronic stroke survivors by restoring gait control modules. medRxiv 2025-04.
- Lin J, Ha SCW, Zhang-Lea, JH, Chan ZYS, Fang K, Guo X, He B, Lau KYS, Chan RHS, Cheung RTH, Chen C-Y, Cheung VCK* (2025) Functional symmetrization of neuromotor modules during locomotor development in human infants. Communications Biology 8: 1782.
- He B#, Salmas P#, Zhang J, Duan X, Cheung VCK* (2025) State-dependent neural representations of muscle synergies in the spinal cord revealed by optogenetic stimulation. Journal of Physiology 603(16): 4659-4679. 【Featured and discussed in journal’s extended commentary】
- Guo X, Huang S, He B, Lan C, Xie JJ, Lau KYS, Takei T, Mak ADP, Cheung RTH, Seki K, Cheung VCK*, Chan RHM* (2025) Inhibitory components in muscle synergies factorized by the rectified latent variable model from electromyographic data. IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics 29(2): 1049-1061.
- Cheung VCK*, Seki K* (2021) Approaches to revealing the neural basis of muscle synergies: A review and a critique. Journal of Neurophysiology 125: 1580-1597. 【Invited in-depth review for acknowledging the career of Emilio Bizzi, Institute Professor of MIT】
- Cheung VCK*#, Cheung BMF#, Zhang JH, Chan ZYS, Ha SCW, Chen C-Y, Cheung RTH* (2020) Plasticity of muscle synergies through fractionation and merging during development and training of human runners. Nature Communications 11: 4356.
- Devarajan K*, Cheung VCK* (2014) On non-negative matrix factorization algorithms for signal-dependent noise, with application to electromyography data. Neural Computation 26: 1128-1168.
- Cheung VCK, Turolla A, Agostini M, Silvoni S, Bennis C, Kasi P, Paganoni S, Bonato P, Bizzi E* (2012) Muscle synergy patterns as physiological markers of motor cortical damage. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 109(36): 14652-14656. 【Recommended by Faculty of 1000】
- Cheung VCK, Piron L, Agostini M, Silvoni S, Turolla A, Bizzi E* (2009) Stability of muscle synergies for voluntary actions after cortical stroke in humans. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 106(46): 19563-19568.
#: co-first author; *: corresponding author
