Contracts
[trailer][itch.io][indidb][tigsource]
- A turn-based tactic video game.
About Me
Here is a virtual but warm greeting from Ziqiao, as you just came across this page! As many of my friends found it hard to pronounce my name (马子乔, pronounced as Tsz-Chaw in Mandarin), it's absolutely fine to just call me Martin alternatively.
Bio
Ziqiao (Martin) Ma is a 3rd year Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science and Engineering with Professor Joyce Chai. His work has been supported in part by the Weinberg Cognitive Science Fellowship. He is also a part-time researcher at Adobe Research. Previously, he worked with Amazon AGI. Martin obtained dual-bachelor degrees from the University of Michigan and Shanghai Jiao Tong University. He received an Outstanding Paper Award at ACL 2023, an Amazon Alexa Prize Award, and an Outstanding GSI Award for teaching. He co-organized SpLU-RoboNLP @ ACL 2024, and serve as a regular PC member/reviewer for various venues.
My Research
The three constant themes of my research are Language, Interaction, and Embodiment from a scalable and developmental angle.
My current research focus is two-fold:
Grounding language models to (and developing frontier models of) the 4D world and human interactions.
Scalable computational models of human cognition, scientifically.
I include a more dynamic and spontaneous sharing of my thoughts here.
Updates
News
- [Secret] We are a starting an exciting and demanding project for NLP teaching :-p
- [July 2024] Excited to be selected to receive the Weinberg Cognitive Science Fellowship!!
- [Jan. 2024] I started my intern with Adobe Research!!
- [Oct. 2023] The 4th SpLU-RoboNLP Workshop will be with ACL 2024. Look forward to your best work and join us in Bangkok :)
- [Jul. 2023] Our paper "World-to-Words: Grounded Open Vocabulary Acquisition through Fast Mapping in Vision-Language Models" was selected for the Outstanding Paper Award at ACL 2023!!
- [Jun. 2023] We won the 1st place in the Alexa Prize SimBot Challenge!!
Archived news...
- [May. 2023] I started my intern with Amazon Alexa AI (Amazon AGI)!!
- [Sep. 2022] I will serve as the Poster/Demo Session Chair for Michigan AI Symposium 2022.
- [Aug. 2022] I will be the Graduate Student Instructor for EECS 595 (NLP) in Fall 2022 at Michigan.
- [Aug. 2021] I graduated from SJTU!
- [May. 2021] I graduated from Michigan!
- [Mar. 2021] I will join the family of the Michigan AI as a Ph.D. student this fall. Go Blue!
- [Dec. 2020] I will be the Instructional Aide for EECS 492 (Intro. AI) in Winter 2021 at Michigan.
- [May. 2020] I will be the Teaching Assistant for VE 492 (Intro. AI) and VE 280 (Program. & Intro. Data Struct.) Summer 2020 at SJTU.
Paper Alerts
- [Jun. 2024] One papers to appear in IROS 2024, see you in Abu Dhabi :)
- [Feb. 2024] Two papers to appear in CVPR 2024, see you in Seattle :)
- [Oct. 2023] One paper to appear in EMNLP 2023, see you in Singapore :)
- [Sep. 2023] One paper to appear in NeurIPS 2023, see you in New Orleans :)
- [May. 2023] Two papers to appear in ACL 2023, and I will serve as an on-site volunteer in Toronto :)
Archived news...
- [Apr. 2023] One paper to appear in IJCAI 2023, see you in Macau :)
- [Oct. 2022] Two papers to appear in EMNLP 2022, and I will serve as an on-site volunteer in Abu Dhabi :)
(Upcoming) Seminar Talks
- [20240712] Babysit A Language Model From Scratch: Interactive Language Learning by Trials and Demonstrations @ Deep Learning: Classics and Trends (DLCT). Host: Rosanne Liu
- [20240705] Language Grounding to the Visual World and Human Interactions: How Far Are We from Embodied Dialogue Agents @ Data Science Group, KAIST.
- [20240627] Babysit A Language Model From Scratch: Interactive Language Learning by Trials and Demonstrations @ CoCoDev Seminar. Host: Abdellah Fourtassi
- [20240529] Language Grounding to the Visual World and Human Interactions: How Far Are We from Embodied Dialogue Agents @ University of Maryland. Host: Furong Huang
Experiences
Education
-
Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering, Certificate in Cognitive Science
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor | Sept 2021 - May 2026 (Expected)
Advisor: Joyce Chai -
(Dual) BSE in Computer Science, Minor in Mathematics (Summa Cum Laude)
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor | Sept 2019 - May 2021
Advisors: Joyce Chai, Qiaozhu Mei, Jie Liu -
(Dual) BSE in Electrical and Computer Engineering
Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai | Sept 2017 - Aug 2021
-
Visiting Student
Technische Universität Berlin, Berlin | Jan 2019 - Feb 2019
-
High School
Chengdu Foreign Languages School, Chengdu | Sept 2011 - June 2017
Industry
-
Adobe Research, San Jose | Jan 2024 - Now
Research Scientist Intern
-
Amazon AGI, Sunnyvale | May 2023 - Aug 2023
Applied Scientist Intern
Teaching @ UMich
- EECS 595 Natural Language Processing, University of Michigan.
- EECS 492 Introduction to Artificial Intelligence, University of Michigan.
Previous Teaching @ SJTU...
- VE 492 Introduction to Artificial Intelligence, Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
- VE 280 Programming and Data Structure, Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
- VP 141 Physics Lab I, Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
- VY 200 Academic Writing II, Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
- VY 100 Academic Writing I, Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
Guest Lectures
- DSC 291 Machine Learning with Few Labels (May. 2024), University of California San Diego. Host: Zhiting Hu
- PSYCH 745 Psychology of Language (Nov. 2023), University of Michigan. Host: Julie Boland
Selected Awards/Recognitions
- Outstanding Paper Award, ACL 2023.
- First Place, Amazon Alexa Prize, 1st SimBot Challenge, 2023.
- Outstanding GSI Award, University of Michigan, 2022.
- James B. Angell Scholar, University of Michigan, 2021.
Selected Fellowships/Scholarships
- Weinberg Cognitive Science Fellowship, 2024.
- Rackham Doctoral Intern Fellowship, 2024.
- China National Scholarship, 2018.
- John Wu & Jane Sun Excellence Scholarship, 2017.
Academic Services
- Co-organizer, the 4th SpLU-RoboNLP Workshop, ACL 2024.
- Seminar Tsar, Michigan AI Seminar Series, 2023.
- Poster/Demo Session Chair, Michigan AI Symposium, 2022.
- Program Committee/Reviewer: NLP venues (e.g., ARR, ACL, EMNLP, NAACL, EACL, COLING, COLM, ...), ML venues (e.g., ICLR, NeurIPS, ECML, TMLR, DMLR, ...), CV venues (CVPR, ECCV, ...), Cognitive Science venues (COGSCI), and sometimes HCI/HRI/CSS/DM venues (RA-L, HRI, CHI, ICWSM, ...).
Publications
Show by... ( Selection / Year / Research Topic )
Research Topics: Language Grounding to Visual Perception / Language Grounding to Human Interaction / Language-Guided Multimodal Generation / Embodied AI & RoboNLP / (Inter)active Learning / Teaching & Community Services
* indicates equal contributions; § indicates correspondence and mentoring.
Misc
Game Design (More)
Floating
- A physics-based puzzle video game.
Mentoring
I understand that access to research oppotunities can be hard, particularly for beginners and the underrepresented. If there is a match in research interests, I am happy to collaborate with undergrads and masters when I have the bandwidth. Please check my Research and Mentoring Statements and fill out our application form to indicate that you want to collaborate with me.I've been fortunate to have (co-)mentered and collaborated with these amazingly talented young researchers:
- Zekun Wang (2022-2024), Now Ph.D. @ Georgia Tech.
- Xijia Zhang (2022-2024), Now Ph.D. @ Georgia Tech.
- Jacob Sansom (2022-2024), Now Ph.D. @ UMich.
- Run Peng (2022-2024), Now Ph.D. @ UMich.
- Jiayi Pan (2021-2023), Now Ph.D. @ UCB.
Fun Facts
- I was born and raised up in Chengdu, the home of pandas.
- I am proud of Chengdu Foreign Languages School, my high school, and identify myself as a CFLSer. 成外人永远不会成外人.
- I am INFJ according to the Myers-Briggs, and my friends said that I exhibit stereotypical traits of this personality type...lol
- I love literature and drama. I am particularly interested in Shakespeare's plays, ancient Chinese drama, Latin American literature, and modern Asian literature. Here is one of my essays about Cross-dressed Heroines in Comedies.
- I am a super fan of Nightwish. My favourite album is Imaginaerum.
- [NEW] Lately, I've become deeply fascinated with herbariums. I just started to keep a personal herbarium journal!
Friends
- Jimmy Zhang SDE @ Microsoft, Suzhou, China.
- Sway Ye Ph.D. @ SJTU, Shanghai, China.
- Joy Dong Ph.D. @ UMICH, Ann Arbor, US.
- Haoyang Zhang Ph.D. @ UIUC, Champaign, US.
- ...(if you want to get linked just message me 😏)
Mental Support
- Counseling and Support Services @ SJTU
- Resources for Stress and Mental Health @ Michigan.
Chat?
If you would like to have a random (virtual) coffee chat with me, please visit my calendly page.
Get In Touch
You are welcome to drop me a message :)