Rate My Professor Yi Ma

Professor Yi Ma is a Chair Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Hong Kong, where he serves as Director of the School of Computing and Data Science since July 2024 and Director of the Musketeers Foundation Institute of Data Science since January 2023. He is also affiliated with the Department of Computer Science. Ma received bachelor’s degrees in Automation and Applied Mathematics from Tsinghua University in 1995. He earned master’s degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences and in Mathematics, followed by a PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, all from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2000. His prior appointments include faculty positions at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 2000 to 2011, principal researcher and manager roles at Microsoft Research Asia from 2009 to 2014, executive dean at ShanghaiTech University from 2014 to 2017, and professor at UC Berkeley from 2018 to 2024, where he now holds a visiting professorship. Ma’s research centers on computer vision, high-dimensional data analysis, and intelligent systems. He has published approximately 60 journal papers, 120 conference papers, and multiple textbooks, including High-Dimensional Data Analysis with Low-Dimensional Models. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, ACM, and SIAM. Ma received the NSF CAREER Award in 2003, the ONR Young Investigator Award in 2005, the David Marr Prize at ICCV 1999, and additional best paper awards. He has served as Program Chair for ICCV 2013 and General Chair for ICCV 2015, along with various editorial positions for journals such as IEEE TPAMI and SIAM Journal on Mathematics of Data Science.