Chengqi Zhang has been appointed as a Pro Vice-Chancellor (China Enterprise) on 1 December 2021 at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) till November 2025, a Distinguished (Chair) Professor on 27 February 2017 at UTS till 26 February 2025. In addition, he has been elected as the Chairman of the Australian Computer Society National Committee for Artificial Intelligence in November 2005 till November 2025, and he was elected as a General Chair of IJCAI-2024.  He was awarded an Emeritus Professorship from UTS in 2025.

He had been appointed as an Associate Vice President (Research Relationships China) from 1 December 2017 to 30 November 2021 at UTS, an Executive Director UTS Data Science from 3 January 2017 to 30 November 2017, and an Honorary Professor at the University of Queensland (UQ) from 1 January 2015 to 31 December 2017, an Adjunct Professor at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) from 20 March 2017 to 20 March 2020, and a Research Professor of Information Technology at UTS from 14 December 2001. In addition, he has been elected as the Chairman of IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee of Intelligent Informatics (TCII) from June 2014 to June 2018.

Prof. Zhang obtained his Bachelor's degree from Fudan University in March 1982 in Computer Science, Master's degree by research from Jilin University in March 1985 in Artificial Intelligence, PhD degree from The University of Queensland in October 1991 in Artificial Intelligence, followed by a Doctor of Science (DSc – Higher Doctorate) from Deakin University in October 2002 in Artificial Intelligence.

Prof. Zhang started his career as a Lecturer at the University of New England (UNE) in January 1990. He had been promoted to a Senior Lecturer in January 1994, and then an Associate Professor in January 1998. He worked at Deakin University from January 1999 to December 2001 as an Associate Professor, then moved to UTS in December 2001 where he had since worked as a Research Professor.

Prof. Zhang’s research interests mainly focus on Distributed Artificial Intelligence, Data Mining, Graph Neural Networks and Time Series Analysis. A prolific contributor to his field, Professor Zhang has published over 400 scholarly articles, including a number of papers in first-class international journals, such as Artificial Intelligence, IEEE, and ACM Transactions. As per Google Scholar, his body of work has attracted more than 49,000 citations, an H-index of 79 (on 22/04/2026). He has been a sought-after keynote speaker at 33 international conferences. He has supervised over 40 doctoral graduates, a notable 11 of whom have ascended to full professorships. His dedication earned him the NSW Science and Engineering Award (2011) and the Vice-Chancellor's Award for Outstanding Research in Leadership at UTS (2011). He was also awarded the 2021 IEEE ICDM Outstanding Service Award.

On 16 April 2008, he accepted a position as the founding Director of the UTS Priority Research Centre for Quantum Computation & Intelligent Systems (QCIS) till 2016. Under Prof. Zhang's leadership, QCIS has attracted research funding in excess of $16.9 million from the ARC and industry and attracted ten ARC Future Fellowships and five ARC DECRAs awards to date. QCIS has helped UTS Computer Science to be ranked among the top 100 universities by QS 2021, and No. 11 worldwide based on Shanghai JiaoTong University’s academic rankings for 2021. QCIS has established five joint research centres with Tsinghua University, Shanghai JiaoTong University, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Beijing Institute of Technology, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. QCIS has spin-off into two new research centres in 2017 as Centre for Quantum Software and Information (CQSI) and the Centre for Artificial Intelligence (CAI).

Prof. Zhang is a Fellow of the Australian Computer Society (ACS) and a Fellow of the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (IEEE). Additionally, he served in the ARC College of Experts from 2012 to 2014. He had been elected as the founding Chair of the Steering Committee of the International Conference on Knowledge Science, Engineering, and Management between 2006 and 2014. He has been serving as an Associate Editor for three international journals, including IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering from 2005 to 2008; and he served as General Chair, PC Chair, or Organising Chair for five international Conferences including IJCAI 2024, KDD 2015, and ICDM 2010.