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 4th year Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science and Engineering advised by 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.
He teaches Natural Language Processing and won an Outstanding Guaduate Student Instructor Award.
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 cognitive angle.
My current research focus is two-fold: Grounding and alignment: connecting language to everything non-linguistics.
I (mostly) agree with Freda Shi's view on the definition of grounding, and grounding != alignment. We wrote something on alignment, and I will find some time to put down my thoughts on the difference between alignment and grounding (TODO list +1)..
Grounding language to the physical world: Understanding and generating language that is grounded to sensorimotor experiences and physical situations. There are more to look at beyond 2D grounding, e.g., video, 3D, generative world models.
Grounding language to human interactions: (Co-)situated Human-AI interaction in shared environment with disparate mental states, and collaborations towards a common ground.
Alignment in post-training and at inference time: Human-like learning that is (inter)active, data-efficient, and continual on (semi-)structured data upon pre-trained systems.
Applications of frontier models in situated/embodied agents as well as content generation.
Scalable representations as computational abstractions of cognition.
Scaling law and developmental psychology: Exploring the developmental trajectories of large-scale frontier models and the emergent cognitive capabilities over the course of development.
Benchmarking and computational inquiry of human-like cognition: Computational abstractions to inquire about potential mechanisms of how humans acquire cognitive skills, process language, as well as collaborate.
Cross-cultural and cross-lingual conventions of cognition. (Languages are dying! Under-represented languages are dear to my heart but I plan (try hard) not to do (too much) research on this topic before I finish my PhD lol)
I include a more dynamic and spontaneous sharing of my thoughts here.
[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
[Sep. 2024] One papers to appear in NeurIPS 2024, see you in Vancouver :)
[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 :)
Seminar Talks
[20241204] Understanding You without Becoming You: Towards Situated Machine Theory of Mind @ Cognitive Science Seminar Series, UMich.
Previous 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
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:
I was given my Chinese name, 马子乔, through a visually symbolic process, breaking down the radicals of 骄子, which roughly translates to 'the chosen one' in English. This is one of the reasons why logographic languages are so beautiful.
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 love movies, I am obsessed with Czechoslovak New Wave these days.
[NEW] Lately, I've become deeply fascinated with herbariums. I just started to keep a personal herbarium journal!
Random Tours
Take a random virtual stroll over to one of my friends' homepage!
It's like a digital house call, minus the awkward small talk and the "sorry, my place is a mess" excuse!
Take a random click over to one of my favorite papers (which does not imply that I agree with every statement and all experimental setups)...the kind I secretly wish I had written myself (but hey, I'll settle for being an enthusiastic admirer)!
When I was exhausted but couldn't take time off to travel, I'd go on virtual adventures instead:
randomly searching for remote destinations and dropping pins on Google Maps.
Here are a few spots that I swear I'll visit in person...someday, eventually!