Brief Introduction

Ke Ma is a Ph.D. candidate in Artificial Intelligence at the School of Artificial Intelligence and Automation, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, and an Adjunct Faculty member at the College of Design and Innovation, Tongji University. His research focuses on Design + AI, 3D Computer Vision, Embodied AI, Human-Computer Interaction, and Spatial Intelligence. He has long engaged with intelligent perception, interactive systems, and product-service system design in complex scenarios, including biomedical laboratories, civil aviation cabins, and urban spaces. His recent work covers 3D reconstruction of transparent liquids and transparent objects, physics-aware 3D scene graphs, autonomous robotic laboratories, and robotic vision-language grasping. His research has been published in leading venues and journals in artificial intelligence, computer vision, and design, including AAAI, the ACM Web Conference, ECCV, CVPR, DRS, ServDes, Nature Machine Intelligence, and Cell Reports. He has participated in multiple civil aviation system innovation projects in collaboration with The Boeing Company. These works won the Crystal Cabin Award in the University category for consecutive years and led to multiple U.S. patents.

Research

Design + AI and Human-Computer Interaction

3D Computer Vision and Spatial Intelligence

Embodied AI and Robotic Systems

Data Visualization and Product-Service System Design

Autonomous Robotic Laboratories and Biomedical AI

Teaching

Undergraduate: Professional Design, Interaction Design, Open-source Hardware and Programming

Graduate: Data Visualization, Interaction Design, Design Data Analysis

Academic and Social Posts

Program Committee Member / Reviewer for international conferences: AAAI 2027 and 2026, ACM MM 2026, DRS 2026, TEI 2025, RSD15, ICOST, etc.

Journal Reviewer: Nature Machine Intelligence, etc.

Education Background

2022.09-2026.08  Ph.D. Candidate in Artificial Intelligence, School of Artificial Intelligence and Automation, Huazhong University of Science and Technology

2013.09-2016.06  Master of Engineering in Human-Computer Interaction, Department of Informatics Engineering, School of Electronic Information and Communications, Huazhong University of Science and Technology

2009.09-2013.06  Bachelor of Engineering in Electronic Engineering, Department of Informatics Engineering, School of Electronic Information and Communications, Huazhong University of Science and Technology

Work Experience

2026.06-present  Tongji University Adjunct faculty

2022.09-present  Research Assistant, Artificial Intelligence and Medical Laboratory, Huazhong University of Science and Technology

2019.08-present  Human-Computer Interaction Expert, Materials Application and Design Lab, Tongji University

2017.03-2019.03  Research Liaison, City Science Lab @ Shanghai

2016.09-2019.03  Research Assistant, College of Design and Innovation, Tongji University

2014.09-2016.06  Research Assistant, Artificial Intelligence and Bioinformatics Lab, Huazhong University of Science and Technology

2012.07-2012.10  R&D Intern, Tencent

Design

[1] 2025  Ultra-lightweight Display System, Crystal Cabin Award Winner - University.

[2] 2024  Foldable Seat Design, Crystal Cabin Award Winner - University.

Publications

[1] Ma, Ke, Fang, Yizhou, Weibel, Jean-Baptiste, Tan, Shuai, Wang, Xinggang, Xiao, Yang, Fang, Yi, and Xia, Tian. "Phys-Liquid: A Physics-Informed Dataset for Estimating 3D Geometry and Volume of Transparent Deformable Liquids." Accepted to the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 2026. Oral, CCF-A. (First author)

[2] Ma, Ke, Fu, Cong, Wang, Jianing, Wang, Yifei, Li, Wenyuan, Wang, Xinggang, Wang, Meng, and Xia, Tian. "WPIS: From In-the-Wild Web Images to Physics-Aware 3D Scene Graphs for Physical Reasoning." Proceedings of the ACM Web Conference 2026, pp. 1410-1421. 2026. CCF-A. (First author)

[3] Ma, Ke, Valsecchi, Francesca, Tan, Yuchen, Ji, Mingjia, Shen, Junru, Ma, Xiaoya, Wu, Duan, Mo, Jiao, and Zhao, Shijian. "A 4R-supported circular product-service system for luxury branded events." DRS 2026. (First author)

[4] Tan, Shuai, Gong, Biao, Wei, Yujie, Zhang, Shiwei, Liu, Zhuoxin, Ma, Ke, Zheng, Dandan, Chen, Jingdong, et al. "Synmotion: Semantic-visual adaptation for motion customized video generation." CVPR 2026. CCF-A. (Co-author)

[5] Trapani, Paola Maria, Ma, Ke, and Mo, Jiao. "Redesigning Equine Air Transport: A Product-Service System to Empower the Horse-Owner Alliance." ServDes 2025. (Co-author)

[6] Wang, Xiayu*, Ma, Ke*, Zhong, Ruiyun, Wang, Xinggang, Fang, Yi, Xiao, Yang, and Xia, Tian. "Towards dual transparent liquid level estimation in biomedical lab: Dataset, methods and practices." European Conference on Computer Vision, pp. 198-214. Springer Nature Switzerland, 2024. (Co-first author)

[7] Gan, Jiefeng, Wang, Hanchen, Yu, Hui, He, Zitong, Zhang, Wenjuan, Ma, Ke, Zhu, Lianghui, et al. "Focalizing Regions of Biomarker Relevance Facilitates Biomarker Prediction on Histopathological Images." iScience 26, no. 10, 2023. (Co-author)

[8] Trapani, Paola Maria, Mo, Jiao, and Ma, Ke. "A product-service system design approach for the frame innovation of food and beverage on board of civil aviation aircraft." DRS 2022. (Co-author)

[9] Bai, Xiang, Wang, Hanchen, Ma, Liya, Xu, Yongchao, Gan, Jiefeng, Fan, Ziwei, Yang, Fan, Ma, Ke, et al. "Advancing COVID-19 Diagnosis with Privacy-Preserving Collaboration in Artificial Intelligence." Nature Machine Intelligence 3, no. 12, 2021: 1081-1089. (Co-author)

[10] Xie, Feng, Zhang, Jianjun, Wang, Jiayin, Reuben, Alexandre, Xu, Wei, Yi, Xin, Varn, Frederick S., Ma, Ke, et al. "Multifactorial deep learning reveals pan-cancer genomic tumor clusters with distinct immunogenomic landscape and response to immunotherapy." Clinical Cancer Research 26, no. 12, 2020: 2908-2920. (Co-author)

[11] Chen, Dan, Xu, Wei, Wang, Yu, Ye, Yongshen, Wang, Yue, Yu, Miao, Gao, Jinghu, Ma, Ke, et al. "Revealing functional crosstalk between distinct bioprocesses through reciprocal functional tests of genetically interacting genes." Cell Reports 29, no. 9, 2019: 2646-2658. (Co-author)

[12] Ma, Ke and Xia, Tian. "AI Encountering Interactive Systems: A Deep Learning Reinforced Musical Composition Model." 15th Sound and Music Computing Conference, 2018. (First author)

[13] Ma, Ke, Zhang, Yixiang, and Cao, Jing. "A New Paradigm of Addressing the Complexity of Entrepreneurial Community Design Leveraging Augmented Reality." International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, pp. 192-201, 2019. (First author)

[14] Ma, Ke and Cao, Jing. "Design pattern as a practical tool for designing adaptive interactions connecting human and social robots." International Conference on Intelligent Human Systems Integration, pp. 613-617, 2019. (First author)

Patents:

[1] Xia, Tian, and Ma, Ke. "Closed cell culturing and harvesting system." US Patent, 2024. Granted. (Co-inventor)

[2] Xia, Tian, and Ma, Ke. "Cell proliferation bioreactor." US Patent, 2023. Granted. (Co-inventor)

[3] Trapani, Paola, Mo, Jiao, Ma, Ke, Gao, Peizhong, Guo, Qian, Zhang, Yiqin, Shen, Youjia, Huang, Jiawen, Wei, Daniel, and Vandewall, Cynthia A. "Aircraft galley, and method and apparatus for configuring aircraft galley." US Patent, 2024. Granted. (Co-inventor)

[4] Mo, Jiao, Ma, Ke, Trapani, Paola, Silli, Saverio, Liu, Yiwei, Yuan, Jialin, Tan, Yuchen, Song, Jiyu, Kuerban, Kudilaiti, and Gao, Peizhong. "Device for live animal transport." US Patent 18/676,906, 2024. Granted. (Co-inventor)

[5] Dong, Z., Liu, W., Vandewall, C. A., Hettick, L. D., Mo, J., Ma, K., and Huang, H. "Projectors, aircraft projection systems, and methods for projecting images." US Patent App. 19/304,828, 2025. Published. (Co-inventor)

[6] Mo, Jiao, Ma, Ke, et al. "In-flight Projection System." US Patent App., 2026. Filed. (Co-inventor)

[7] Mo, Jiao, Ma, Ke, et al. "Multi-purposed Seat Back Shell System." US Patent App., 2026. Filed. (Co-inventor)

Exhibitions:

[1] 2025  Boeing Pavilion, International Transport Expo, Beijing. Exhibited work: In-flight lightweight projection system.

[2] 2025  The 24th Milan Triennial International Fair. Exhibited work: Exploring Bioluminescence Crowdsourced Data.

[3] 2018  City Science Summit 2018, Shanghai. Co-organizer and speaker.

[4] 2018  MIT Pavilion, World Innovation & Entrepreneurship EXPO. Co-curator.

[5] 2018  CityScope Shenzhen Bay. Curator.

[6] 2015  E:Sonic: Interactive audio-visual live performance, Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai. Creator.

Honors and Awards

[1] 2026  Crystal Cabin Award Shortlist - University, Multi-purposed Seat Back Shell System, Tongji University in collaboration with Boeing.

[2] 2025  Crystal Cabin Award Winner - University, Ultra-lightweight Display System, Tongji University in collaboration with Boeing.

[3] 2024  Crystal Cabin Award Winner - University, Foldable Seat Design, Tongji University.

[4] 2023  Crystal Cabin Award Shortlist - University, In-flight Gallery and Knowledge System, Tongji University.

Contact

Email: suta-boeing@tongji.edu.cn

Web: make3dworld.com