Ziqiao Ma

Here is a virtual but warm greeting from Ziqiao, as you just came across his page! Well, many of my non-Chinese friends found it hard to pronounce my Chinese name (pronounced as Tsz-Kiu), so...it's absolutely fine to just call me Martin alternatively.

I am an incoming Ph.D. student at the University of Michigan working with Joyce Chai in the Situated Language and Embodied Dialogue (SLED) Lab. I will obtain my Dual Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science at the University of Michigan and Electrical and Computer Engineering at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

I am broadly interested in Natural Language Processing (Grounded Language Processing, Human-Robot Communication) and Machine Learning (Graph Neural Networks, Semi-Supervised Learning, Knowledge Graphs).

News

• [May. 2021] I graduated from Michigan!
• [Mar. 2021] I will join the family of the Michigan AI Lab as a Ph.D. student this fall. Go Blue!
• [Dec. 2020] I will be the Instructional Aide for EECS 492 Winter 2021.
• [Aug. 2020] I moved my blogs here. Let me know what you want to see!

• Blogs

Experience

Education

• University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
  Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering | Sept 2021 - May 2026
  Advisors: Dr. Joyce Chai
• University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
  B.S.E in Computer Science | Minor in Mathematics | GPA: 4.00/4.00 | Sept 2019 - May 2021
  Advisors: Dr. Joyce Chai, Dr. Jie Liu, Dr. Qiaozhu Mei
  Artificial Intelligence:

  • Natural Language Processing (A+)
  • Deep Learning for CV (A+)
  • Computer Vision (A+)
  • Machine Learning (A+)
  • Artificial Intelligence (A)
  • Information Retrieval (A+)
  • Ethics for AI and Robotics (A)

  Software Development:

  • Video Game Development (A+)
  • Web Systems (A)
  • Data Structure and Algorithms (A)

  Mathematics:

  • Numerical Analysis (A+)
  • Matrix Theory (A+)
  • Probability Theory (A)
• Shanghai Jiao Tong University
  B.S.E in Electrical and Computer Engineering | GPA: 3.81/4.00 | Sept 2017 - Aug 2021
  
  • Discrete Mathematics (A)
  • Honors Mathematics II-IV (A-, A, A-)
  • Programming and Data Structure (A)
  • Logic Design (A)
• Technische Universität Berlin
  Winter Program | Jan 2019 - Feb 2019
  
  • Programming in Java (A)
• Chengdu Foreign Languages School
  High School | Sept 2011 - June 2017

Timeline

Selected Projects

Research

Active learning on Graph Neural Network

[code: upon request]

• Instructed by Professor Qiaozhu Mei.
• A practical active learning query strategy on Graph Neural Networks.

GNN Prediction Interpretation: Spatial Cell Patterns of T2D Islets

[report: upon request][code]

• Instructed by Professor Jie Liu and Marcela Brissova.
• Redesign the GNN Explainer to perform label-wise explanation, validate the model on T2D islet samples and extract predictive spatial patterns.

Exception Handling in Autonomous Vehicles via Human Language Communication

[slides]

• Instructed by Professor Joyce Chai.
• Develop a smart interface that takes human interaction by language instructions and handle the exceptions in autonomous vehicles.

Correlational Information Utilization in Spatial Temporal GCN on Traffic Data

[code: synthetic][code: validation]

• Instructed by Professor Qiaozhu Mei.
• Confirm the incapability of GNNs to capture correlational information by synthetic simulation.
• Validate lower training loss of ST‐GCN on traffic data with gaussian copula loss.

Courses

Contracts

[trailer][itch.io][indidb][tigsource]

• Final Project of EECS 494: Video Game Development.
• A turn-based tactic video game.

Floating

[play online][download]

• Project 2 of EECS 494: Video Game Development.
• A physics-based puzzle video game.

Towards More Knowledgeable Reasoning: Experiments on Natural Language Inference

[report][code]

• Final project of EECS 595: Natural Language Processing. Instructed by Professor Joyce Chai.
• Exploited external knowledge to perform NLI tasks including Question Answering, Conversation Entailment and Plausible Inference.
• Experimented on different finetuning strategies and utilized knowledge graphs for GCN-based reasoning.

Scalable and Diverse Neural Style Transfer with Generative Adversarial Networks

[report][slides][code]

• Final project of EECS 442: Computer Vision. Instructed by Professor Andrew Owens.
• Reproduced CycleGAN, StarGAN v1 and v2 for unpaired image translation.
• Evaluated them quantitatively on neural style transfer tasks with FID score.

• Full Portfolio

Misc

• 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。
• My dream school during high school was The University of Hong Kong (HKU), yet I declined the offer of BSc(QFin) in pursuit of my engineering dream.
• I love literature and drama. I am particularly interested in Shakespeare's plays, ancient Chinese drama and modern Asian literature. Here is one of my essays about Cross-dressed Heroines in Comedies.
• I enjoyed travelling and have been to 12 countries. Maybe I have been to your hometown?
• I am a super fan of Nightwish. My favourite album is Imaginaerum.

Mental Support

• Counseling and Support Services @ SJTU
• Resources for Stress and Mental Health @ Michigan.

Friends

• Jimmy Zhang Software Engineer @ Microsoft, Suzhou, China.
• Sway Ye Ph.D. @ SJTU, Shanghai, China.
• Joy Dong B.S. @ UMICH, Ann Arbor, US.
• ...(if you want to get linked just message me 😏)

Get In Touch

You are welcome to drop me a message :)