He worked at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, NJ, from 1988 to 1993 and joined the faculty at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1993 where he is currently Professor and Chair of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. He has also been visiting Professor at TsingHua University, Taiwan, Beijing University, China, and University of Tokyo, Japan. He was the founding director of UCSB's Computer Engineering program. His current research interests include design verification, test, silicon debug, and multimedia computing. He has published over 300 technical papers, co-authored three books and holds ten U.S. Patents in these areas.

Cheng, a fellow of IEEE, received Best Paper Awards at the 1994 Design Automation Conference and 1999 Design Automation Conference, 2001 Annual Best Paper Award in Journal of Information Science and Engineering, Best Paper Award in 2003 Conference of Design Automation and Test in Europe (DATE 2003), and the Best Paper award at 1987 AT&T Conference on Electronic Testing. He currently serves as Editor-in-Chief for IEEE Design and Test of Computers, Editor for IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems, Associate Editor for ACM Transactions on Design Automation of Electronic Systems, Associate Editor for Formal Methods in System Design, Editor for Journal of Electronic Testing: Theory and Applications, and Editor for Foundations and Trends in Electronic Design Automation. He has been General Chairs and Program Chairs for a number of international conferences on design, design automation and test.