Brief Bio

Professor Eugene Ch’ng is founding director of the NVIDIA Joint-Lab on Mixed Reality, NVIDIA Technology Centre, based at the University of Nottingham’s China campus. He graduated with a best PhD award from the Electronics, Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Birmingham in 2007. He has served at the IBM Visual and Spatial Technology Centre and the Digital Humanities Hub as director of innovation at the University of Birmingham. Prof. Ch’ng has been invited twice to the Royal Society, presenting research at the Summer Science Exhibitions, and were organiser and speaker at the Royal Society Theo Murphy Scientific meeting in 2017. He has also exhibited digital heritage research at the British Council SPARK Festival in Hong Kong, two British Science Festivals, at the Orkney International Science Festival, and for Darwin’s Bicentenary Exhibition at Shrewsbury. He has been featured in numerous international media such as National Geographic Television and Channel Four’s Time Team Special. Prof. Ch’ng is co-editor-in-chief for MIT Press’ PRESENCE: Virtual and Augmented Reality, and have served for many years in virtual and digital heritage conference technical and scientific programmes. He is PI and Co-I on numerous grants that develop digital technologies for cultural heritage and the creative cultural industry supported by UK, European and Chinese grants. Prof. Ch’ng has worked with museums, researchers and practitioners on thousands of digital heritage models globally and has a drone 3D survey flight record of over 100 miles. He was one of the global consultants for the V&A’s ReACH programme (Reproduction of Art & Cultural), and participated in the global review and redraft of Henry Cole’s 1867 Charter and the technical policy. Prof. Ch’ng was awarded the Ningbo Municipal Individual 3315 Talent award in 2015. 

Recent Grant Awards

158,088 RMB 2022

• Principal Investigator – ‘Expanding the ‘Shaping the Connected Museum’ project in the Zhejiang Province: Knowledge and Cultural Exchange. RKE Grant

£500,000+ 2020

• Co-Principal Investigator – ‘Shaping the Connected Museum II’, AHRC Grant + Extension [link: https://app.dimensions.ai/details/grant/grant.8856193]

£24,000 2019

• Co-Principal Investigator – ‘Shaping the Connected Museum’, AHRC Network grant [link: https://app.dimensions.ai/details/grant/grant.7925009]

300,000 RMB + 400,000RMB (Full PhD Scholarship) 2018 to 2021

• Principal Investigator – IAMET Belt & Road Grant “Cultural Heritage and Cross-Border Digital Communication in the Terrestrial and Maritime Silk Road: Facilitating the Construction of a Cloud-Based Heritage Open VR Social Database”, Ningbo Science and Technology Bureau.

425,000 RMB 2017 to 2018

• Principal Investigator – “Digital Technology Enhanced Cultural and Heritage in the Development of the Knowledge Economy ” AHRC Centre for Digital Copyright and IP Research in China, Ningbo Science and Technology Bureau.

150,000 RMB Dec 2016 to Dec. 2018

• Principle Investigator – 基于博物馆馆藏的中国文化教育虚拟现实系统开发的关键技术研发及实践, “R & D and Practice of Key Technologies in Virtual Reality System Development of Chinese Culture and Education-Based Museum Collections” Zhejiang Science and Technology Development – Commonwealth. The first grant collaborating with Ningbo Museum.

€2,500,000  Oct. 2016 to Oct. 2021

• Co-I (Local PI) – ERC Advanced Grant: “Lost Frontiers” Europe’s Lost Frontiers: exploring climate change, settlement and colonisation of the submerged landscapes of the North Sea basin using ancient DNA, seismic mapping and complex systems modelling (lead).

£305,000 Oct. 2016 to Oct. 2017

• Co-I (Local PI) – AHRC “Curious Travellers” crowdsourcing in mitigation of large-scale heritage damage. A big data-driven project for mobile- crowdsourcing and Web-crawling of cultural heritage image bases.

Professor Eugene Ch’ng is founder and director of the NVIDIA Joint-Lab on Mixed Reality, NVIDIA Technology Centre, based at the University of Nottingham’s China campus. He graduated with a best PhD award from the Electronics, Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Birmingham in 2007. He has served at the IBM Visual and Spatial Technology Centre and the Digital Humanities Hub as director of innovation at the University of Birmingham. Prof. Ch’ng has been invited twice to the Royal Society, presenting research at the Summer Science Exhibition, and was organiser and speaker at the Royal Society Theo Murphy Scientific meeting in 2017. He has also exhibited at two British Science Festivals, at the Orkney International Science Festival, and for Darwin’s Bicentenary Exhibition. He has been featured in numerous international media such as National Geographic Television and Channel Four’s Time Team Special. Prof. Ch’ng is co-editor-in-chief for MIT Press’ Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments, and has served in conference technical and scientific programme committees such as VSMM, DigitalHeritage, and DS-RT for years. He is PI and Co-I on numerous grants related to cultural heritage supported by The Leverhulme Trust, the ERC, AHRC, Zhejiang Science and Technology, and the recently awarded Silk Road heritage database crowdsourcing project. As one of the global consultant for the V&A’s ReACH programme (Reproduction of Art & Cultural), he participated in the review and redraft of Henry Cole’s 1867 Charter and the technical policy. Prof. Ch’ng was awarded the Ningbo Municipal Individual 3315 Talent award in 2015.

Teaching (Topical) 

• Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Mixed Reality
• Social Media Analytics
• Digital Culture and Heritage

Teaching (Past)

• Computer Fundamentals
• Human Computer Interaction
• Web Programming and Scripting
• C++ Programming