She specializes in personality, social, health, applied, cross-cultural, and cyber-psychology. She is an elected Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science (APS) and has served as the board secretary of the International Council of Psychologists (ICP). She received the Fulbright Senior Scholar Award, Cambridge Hughes Hall Fellowship, ICP Early Career Research Award, and Humanities and Social Sciences Prestigious Fellowship of the Research Grants Council (RGC). Professor Cheng was an Associate Editor of Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (Personality Processes and Individual Differences section), a flagship journal in the social psychology field; and is currently an Associate Editor of Health Psychology Review, a flagship journal in the clinical psychology field. She is also a Consulting Editor of Psychological Bulletin, and a Review Editor of Frontiers in Psychology (Psychopathology). At the University of Hong Kong, she was the Associate Dean (Postgraduate Education) at the Faculty of Social Sciences and now the Associate Dean (Courses and Professional Development) at the Graduate School.