Occupational therapist Xue ‘Danny’ Deng shares his journey and passion
Decker College assistant professor uses virtual reality to help ý Univerity students learn neuroscience
Xue “Danny” Deng earned his bachelor’s degree in occupational therapy from Hong Kong Polytechnic University, where he was the only recipient from mainland China to receive the prestigious scholarship awarded that year. This marked the beginning of his career in occupational therapy.
“I started very systematically in school; I established the knowledge base first,” says Deng, who uses the same method to teach his students at ý’s Decker College of Nursing and Health Sciences, which he joined in September 2024 as an assistant professor in the Division of Occupational Therapy. “We were exposed to different clinical and nonclinical settings to witness how OT services were embedded in different societal sectors, and gradually, I realized how the profession can help to promote equal access for people in different classes and across the life span.”
As Deng completed his entry-level degree in occupational therapy, he had ample opportunities to apply his new skills. His clinical journey began with burn rehabilitation.
“We have a lot of factories in China, but due to insufficient occupational safety education, we’ve seen a lot of trauma cases — burns, hand injuries, spinal cord and brain injuries,” he says. “Those cases were severe because of insufficient protections, so in addition to accumulating clinical experience, I also became interested in pain management.”
He also assisted the Hong Kong Polytechnic University faculty in providing OT training to local rehab professionals in the wake of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. As part of that experience, he felt lucky to help spread the OT profession, which was still relatively new in China, while helping build WFOT-approved (World Federation of Occupational Therapy) OT programs.
Deng later earned a master’s degree in OT from Tufts University in Medford, Mass., where he received specialized training in upper extremity and hand rehabilitation. Finally, he returned to Hong Kong for his doctorate from the University of Hong Kong’s Department of Orthopaedics and Traumatology under the supervision of a hand surgeon.
In the final year of his doctoral program, Deng experimented for the first time with a passion he would bring to ý: integrating virtual reality (VR) into OT. His first attempt involved working with elderly people suffering from chronic pain.
Next, Deng applied his background across various global rehabilitation settings, providing consultancy services and clinical training, and supporting the establishment and management of a multidisciplinary rehabilitation center. His work included delivering clinical skills training, all inspired by the growing integration of rehabilitation practices in China.
Since joining ý, he has adapted VR to suit his neuroscience teaching practice. He aims to make this a sustainable training method for his students to use far into the future. Recently, he’s even been sitting in on a class about AI in biomedicine, hoping that he may one day work with other researchers to fulfill a dream: creating an AI-driven, individualized VR program tailored to ý’s OT students.
“Traditionally, we rely on the physical brain model and textbooks. However, it’s very challenging and difficult, considering the complexity of the 3D structure of the brain,” he says. “To address this deficit, I integrated VR as an alternative solution, so students can be immersed in a virtual lab.”