PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Wei-Chiu Ma

Also known as 馬惟九

Wei-Chiu Ma is a Cornell assistant professor whose AI research connects 3D/4D computer vision with robotics. He completes an M.S. in robotics at Carnegie Mellon, develops work on pedestrian forecasting and stereo matching, and presents his MIT Ph.D. thesis in 2023. His research includes LiDARsim, which generates realistic LiDAR data for autonomous vehicles, and UniSim, a neural closed-loop sensor simulator. After research roles at Uber ATG and Waabi and postdoctoral work at the University of Washington and Ai2, he joins Cornell in 2024.

Works
77
Citations
3,680
h-index
24
Badges

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 27 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. 2016

    A robotics master's thesis

    He completes an M.S. in Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University in May 2016 with a thesis on game-theoretic multi-pedestrian activity forecasting, advised by Kris M. Kitani.

  2. 2017

    Forecasting pedestrian interactions

    He coauthors a 2017 paper that models pedestrian interactions with game theory and deep learning-based visual analysis to estimate individual behavior.

  3. 2019

    DeepPruner for stereo matching

    He coauthors DeepPruner in 2019, using a differentiable PatchMatch module to prune stereo-matching candidates and speed real-time inference.

  4. 2020

    Simulating LiDAR for self-driving

    He coauthors LiDARsim, a CVPR 2020 paper that produces realistic LiDAR point clouds for self-driving vehicles.

  5. 2022

    A Siebel Scholar

    In August 2022, he is selected as a Siebel Scholar.

  6. By 2023

    Industry roles in autonomy

    By 2023, he has worked at Uber ATG and serves part-time as a senior research scientist at Waabi, a self-driving technology company.

  7. 2023

    UniSim sensor simulation

    He coauthors UniSim in 2023, a neural sensor simulator that turns one vehicle log into a realistic closed-loop multi-sensor simulation.

  8. September 2023

    An MIT Ph.D. thesis defense

    At MIT, he defends his Ph.D. thesis in September 2023 on robust 3D perception, reconstruction, and simulation from sparse, noisy real-world observations.

  9. 2023–2024

    Postdoc at UW and Ai2

    From 2023 to 2024, he works as a postdoctoral researcher in the University of Washington's RAIVN Lab with advisors Ali Farhadi and Ranjay Krishna. He completes Ai2's Young Investigator program in 2024 before joining Cornell.

  10. Since 2024

    Assistant professor at Cornell

    He joins Cornell as an assistant professor of computer science in Fall 2024. As of October 2026, he researches 3D/4D computer vision and robotics and aims to build AI systems to understand and reconstruct dynamic worlds.

Career

  1. Since 2024Cornell UniversityAssistant Professor of Computer Science
  2. Until 2024Allen Institute for AI (Ai2)Young Investigator
  3. 2023–2024University of WashingtonPostdoctoral Researcher, RAIVN Lab
  4. WaabiSenior Research Scientist

Education

  1. 2023Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyPh.D.
  2. 2016Carnegie Mellon UniversityM.S. in Robotics

From the biography and OpenAlex affiliations (the years of papers that list the organization), so some years are approximate.

Colleagues

People named in this biography, and people with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

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  1. Wei-Chiu Ma - Robotics Institute Carnegie Mellon University ri.cmu.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.
  2. CVPR 2017 Open Access Repository openaccess.thecvf.com. Checked 27 October 2026.
  3. [1909.05845] DeepPruner: Learning Efficient Stereo Matching via Differentiable PatchMatch arxiv.org. Checked 27 October 2026.
  4. CVPR 2020 Open Access Repository openaccess.thecvf.com. Checked 27 October 2026.
  5. Wei-Chiu Ma, Cornell cs.cornell.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.
  6. 11 new faculty to join Bowers CIS | Cornell Bowers bowers.cornell.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.
  7. [2308.01898] UniSim: A Neural Closed-Loop Sensor Simulator arxiv.org. Checked 27 October 2026.
  8. Thesis Defense: Wei-Chiu Ma, "Learning 3D Modeling and Simulation From and For the Real World" | MIT CSAIL csail.mit.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.
  9. UW RAIVN LAB People raivn.cs.washington.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.
  10. Young investigators program | Ai2 allenai.org. Checked 27 October 2026.
  11. Wei-Chiu Ma | Department of Computer Science | Cornell Bowers cs.cornell.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.