Ziqiao "Martin" 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 (马子乔, pronounced as Tsz-Chaw in Mandarin or Tsz-Kiu in Standard Romanization), so...it's absolutely fine to just call me Martin alternatively.

I am a first-year Ph.D. student at the University of Michigan working with Professor Joyce Chai in the Situated Language and Embodied Dialogue (SLED) Lab. My current research focuses on Natural Language Processing (Grounded Language Understanding and Acquisition, Communication with Embodied Agents) and Machine Learning (Graph Neural Networks, Meta Learning, Semi-supervised Learning)

Prior than that, I obtained my Dual Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science at the University of Michigan and Electrical and Computer Engineering at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

Updates

News

• [Aug. 2021] I graduated from SJTU!
• [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 in Winter 2021 at Michigan.
• [May. 2020] I will be the Teaching Assistant for VE 492 and VE 280 Summer 2020 at SJTU.

Schedule

If you would like to have a conversation with me, please visit my scheduling page and request an event.

Experience

Education

• University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
  Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering | Sept 2021 - May 2026 (Expected)
  Advisor: Prof. 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: Prof. Joyce Chai, Prof. Jie Liu, Prof. 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

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.

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.

An Overview of Challenges in Fair Procurement and Use of Demographic Data (2021)

[report]

• Final project of EECS 498: Ethics for AI and Robotics. Instructed by Professor Benjamin Kuipers.
• Understand the existing challenges in demographic data is crucial towards filling the gap between principles and practice.
• Provide a well-structured overview of all the existing constraints in the procurement and use of demographic data.

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.

Mentees

• Jiayi Pan, B.S. @ UMICH, Ann Arbor, US.
• Please check out this if you want to work with me :-)

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 😏)

Mental Support

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

Get In Touch

You are welcome to drop me a message :)