Mingyu Derek Ma

PhD Student

Hi!

I’m a PhD student at UCLA Computer Science Department working with Prof. Nanyun (Violet) Peng at the PLUS lab.

I’m broadly interested in a wide range of natural language processing (NLP) problems and my recent research focus is developing a system that can learn how to organize events contained in unstructured information into generic event ontology which are able to benefit downstream event-focused analytics.

I received my bachelor’s degree in Computing from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University with First Class Honours in 2018 and exchanged at the University of Maryland in 2016. Before joining UCLA, I worked at PolyU, The Chinese University of Hong Kong and USC Information Sciences Institute.

Contact me:
mdma at ucla.edu | | he/his/him

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publications & preprints

New! EventPlus: A Temporal Event Understanding Pipeline

Mingyu Derek Ma, Jiao Sun, Mu Yang, Kung-Hsiang Huang, Nuan Wen, Shikhar Singh, Rujun Han, Nanyun Peng

NAACL (Demonstrations), 2021.

A temporal event understanding pipeline that integrates various state-of-the-art event understanding components including event trigger and type detection, event argument detection, event duration and temporal relation extraction.

Dual Memory Network Model for Sentiment Analysis of Review Text

Jiaxing Shen, Mingyu Derek Ma, Rong Xiang, Qin Lu, Elvira Perez Vallejos, Ge Xu, Chu-Ren Huang, Yunfei Long

Knowledge-Based Systems, 2020.

Propose a dual user and product memory network (DUPMN) model to learn user profiles and product information for reviews classification using separate memory networks

Implicit Discourse Relation Identification for Open-domain Dialogues

Mingyu Derek Ma, Kevin K. Bowden, Jiaqi Wu, Wen Cui, Marilyn Walker

ACL, 2019.

Create a novel dataset of implicit discourse relation argument pairs and labels for dialogic turns

Dual Memory Network Model for Biased Product Review Classification

Yunfei Long, Mingyu Derek Ma, Qin Lu, Rong Xiang, Chu-Ren Huang

EMNLP WASSA, 2018.

Use of separate memory networks for user profile and product information helps sentiment analysis on Yelp and IMDB datasets

BlocHIE: a BLOCkchain-based platform for Healthcare Information Exchange

Shan Jiang, Jiannong Cao, Hanqing Wu, Yanni Yang, Mingyu Derek Ma, Jianfei He

SMARTCOMP, 2018.

A Blockchain-based platform for healthcare information exchange consisting of two loosely-coupled Blockchains for different sources

curriculum vitae

Experience

UCLA Computer Science Department
Graduate Student Researcher with Prof. Nanyun (Violet) Peng / Teaching Assistant
Since Sep 2020, Los Angeles, CA
USC Information Sciences Institute
Graduate Research Assistant with Prof. Nanyun (Violet) Peng
Aug 2019 - Aug 2020, Marina del Rey, CA
The Chinese University of Hong Kong Human-Computer Communications Lab & Stanley Ho Big Data Decision Analytics Research Centre
Research Assistant with Prof. Helen Meng
Jan - Jul 2019, Hong Kong
UC Santa Cruz Natural Language and Dialogue Systems Lab
Research Intern with Prof. Marilyn Walker
Jun - Oct 2018, Santa Cruz, CA
PolyU Department of Computing
Student Assistant with Prof. Qin Lu and Prof. Jiannong Cao
Jan 2017 - June 2018, Hong Kong
MIT Geospatial Data Center
Research Intern with Dr. Abel Sanchez and Prof. John R. Williams
Jul - Aug 2017, Cambridge, MA

SOHU.com
Front-end Web Development Intern, Jun - Jul 2016, Shanghai, China

Education

University of California, Los Angeles
PhD Student in Computer Science
Since 2020, Los Angeles, CA
University of Southern California
PhD Student in Computer Science
2019 - 2020, Los Angeles, CA
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Bachelor of Science in Computing
(First Class Honours)
2014 - 2018, Hong Kong
University of Maryland, College Park
Exchange Student
2016, College Park, MD

Awards

Outstanding Project Award - Best Capstone Project Award Competition, PolyU Dept. of Computing: only one in the Dept. of Computing , 2018

PolyU Computing News

HKSAR Government Scholarship Fund Talent Development Scholarship (website), Hong Kong Government , 2018

Silver Award - Hong Kong ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) Awards (website | wiki) Student Innovation Award (Tertiary or Above), Office of the Government Chief Information Officer of the Innovation and Technology Bureau of Hong Kong Government , 2018

PolyU News | PolyU Computing News | PolyU Computing News about InnoCarnival Exhibition | PolyU Tweet

Champion and Most Innovative Award (HKSAR) - Imagine Cup (website | wiki), Microsoft , 2017

Commercial Radio 50th Anniversary Scholarship, Hong Kong Commercial Broadcasting Company Limited & PolyU: only 1 in the Dept. of Computing , 2017

Winner - Hong Kong Techathon (website), PolyU and City University of Hong Kong , 2018

PolyU Computing News | PolyU Tweet

Graduate Representative for Valedictory Speech - PolyU 24th Congregation COMP Session, PolyU Faculty of Engineering , 2018

PolyU Computing News

CMA (The Chinese Manufacturers’ Association of Hong Kong) & Donors Scholarship (website), CMA & PolyU: only 3 in the Dept. of Computing, 2018

Best Creative Service Project - Youth Volunteer Service Conference (website), Agency for Volunteer Service of Hong Kong Government (website), 2017

News by Office of Service-Learning, PolyU | News by HKSAR Gov Agency for Volunteer Service

Champion - PolyU Smart Computing Competition (website), PolyU Dept. of Computing, 2017

PolyU Computing News

Undergraduate Summer Research Abroad Sponsorship (website), PolyU International Affairs Office, 2017

Chinese Mainland and Overseas Activities Fund, PolyU Office of Student Development, 2016

Wong Tit-Shing Student Exchange Scholarship (website), PolyU Faculty of Engineering, 2016

PolyU Exchange Scholarship, PolyU Faculty of Engineering, 2016

Services

Reviewer: EMNLP2019 Workshop DeepLo

Handbook: ACL2020

Secondary Reviewer: EMNLP2019

Webmaster: Creative Computing Co-working Space, PolyU Computing

Student Volunteer: SoCal (Southern California) NLP Symposium 2019

Media Coverage