Dr. Hippocrates Cheng 鄭靖楠 is a composer, theorist, ethnomusicologist from Hong Kong. He is currently an assistant professor of music theory and composition and an affiliated faculty of Asian and Asian American Studies at Binghamton University. In 2024, he completed his Doctor of Music Composition with a minor in ethnomusicology at Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. 

As a composer, he writes contemporary classical music, new music for Asian instruments, and Jazz. As a researcher, he researches the music of Hong Kong composer Doming Lam, East Asian and Southeast Asian music, piano rolls and player piano in early Jazz history and Braille music notation. He has given guest lectures, masterclasses and performances in the United States, Canada, Austria, Germany, China, Japan, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam. 

In 2024 June, his Anti-Asian Hate chamber opera: “All of US” was premiered as the winning work commissioned by the Center for the Performing Arts in Carmel, Indiana. In the summer of 2025, he completed a two-month research residency in Vienna, awarded by the Arnold Schönberg Center, where he conducted in-depth research on Schönberg’s notational style. 

Recently, with fellow colleagues, he founded a creative-research initiative East Asian Music in the Contemporary World (EAMCW) initiative to promote new music for East Asian instruments and to provide a dynamic platform where performers, scholars, students, and community members can experience, reflect on, and engage in dialogue about East Asian music in contemporary contexts.