Professor Profile: DingXin Cheng

Civil Engineering Professor DinXin Cheng originally hails from China, but made his way over to the United States to pursue grad school.

Cheng, "People want to learn things, same with me. I wanna kind of learn something new, something advanced, that's why I tried to continue to pursue the graduate studies."

He would earn his PhD from Texas A&M in 2002 and four years later, make his way to Chico State.

Cheng, "I think the interview really went very well. It just fit my personal goals and I like the campus, I like the people who interviewed me."

Not only would Cheng be teaching on campus though, he also quickly got involved with the California Pavement Preservation Center, or CP2C, starting as a researcher, before moving on to the director, a role he's held since 2010, and one that keeps him pretty busy.

Cheng, "We do a lot of research work for new products, like new paving materials, new pavement preservation technologies, and we conduct a study for pilot implementations, and we also do training material development, technical assistance, laboratory testing, field evaluation."

Because of all this, Cheng was named an O'Connell Endowed Chair, serving a three year term from 2017 through the end of this year.

Cheng, "That was a great honor and a great opportunity. I think through that endowed chair I really got chances to do the things that the regular contract does not allow me to do, and then pursue some real interesting topics, and work with students."

Ultimately, Cheng leaves to learn. It's been a big part of his life and it's a passion that he aims to pass on to his students.

Cheng, "Continue to have that curiosity, how can we improve the world? And same thing, I feel a similar thing when I'm teaching. I hope my students have that continuation of graduate studies, you know, helping the world."