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Biography

Xue “Danny” Deng, PhD, OTR/L, HKROT, is an assistant professor in the Division of Occupational Therapy at 91����’s Decker College of Nursing and Health Sciences. He joined in September 2024. His research focuses on integrating immersive virtual reality, neuroscience, physiological sensing, and emerging technologies to advance pain management, rehabilitation, and health professions education.

Deng leads interdisciplinary research examining the mechanisms and applications of virtual reality for pain management and rehabilitation. His work integrates immersive VR with multimodal measures, including functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), autonomic physiological monitoring, and movement analysis to better understand how technology-based interventions influence pain, brain function, and human performance. His emerging work also explores AI-assisted motion capture and adaptive VR approaches for rehabilitation.

A complementary line of his scholarship focuses on immersive and emerging technologies in health professions education. He integrates VR-based 3D anatomy and neuroscience learning into occupational therapy education and investigates how immersive learning can support spatial understanding, clinical reasoning, and student engagement. His work emphasizes interdisciplinary collaboration across occupational therapy, physical therapy, neuroscience, computer science, and engineering.

Deng completed his occupational therapy training in both the United States and Hong Kong and has more than a decade of clinical, research, and educational experience across the United States, Hong Kong and mainland China. His clinical background includes adult physical rehabilitation, chronic pain, and upper-extremity rehabilitation.

Education

• PhD, orthopedics and traumatology, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
• MS, occupational therapy, Tufts University, Medford, Mass.
• BSc (Hons), occupational therapy, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong

Research Profile

Curriculum Vitae