Wei-Ying Ma
Also known as 馬維英, Wei‐Ying Ma
Wei-Ying Ma is a computer scientist whose work spans image retrieval, web search and AI for science. He studies electrical engineering at National Tsing Hua University and UC Santa Barbara, then works on multimedia systems at HP Labs and search systems at Microsoft Research Asia, including Graph Engine. At ByteDance, he builds an AI lab for machine learning, computer vision, language, speech and recommendation before co-founding Tsinghua AIR and directing health-computing research at BAAI. ACM names him a Fellow for contributions to web search and data mining; as of October 2026, he is CityUHK's Chief of AI and director of the Hong Kong Institute of AI for Science, while leading AI-for-science research at Tsinghua AIR.
- Works
- 422
- Citations
- 30,242
- h-index
- 85
Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 14 October 2026.
Timeline
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1990–1997
From engineering to image retrieval
He earns a B.S. in electrical engineering at National Tsing Hua University in 1990, then M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical and computer engineering at UC Santa Barbara in 1994 and 1997. During his doctorate, he works on the Alexandria Digital Library project.
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By 2001
From HP Labs to Microsoft
Before joining Microsoft Research Asia in 2001, he worked at HP Labs on multimedia adaptation and distributed media services infrastructure.
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2001–2017
Search systems at Microsoft
At Microsoft Research Asia, he leads the Web Search and Data Mining Group and serves as Assistant Managing Director from 2009 to 2017, managing five research groups. His work includes Microsoft Graph Engine, which processes a large knowledge graph for web search and natural-language understanding.
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2017–2020
Building ByteDance's AI lab
In 2017, he founded ByteDance AI Lab and became its vice president and head, directing research in machine learning, computer vision, natural language processing, speech, audio, recommendation and search. The lab's teams developed AI-powered systems for content creation and distribution across ByteDance products. He left ByteDance in 2020.
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2020
Founding Tsinghua AIR
He co-founded Tsinghua's Institute for AI Industry Research with Ya-Qin Zhang in 2020.
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2021–2023
Directing health computing
He served as director of the Health Computing Research Center with the Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence.
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2023
An ACM Fellowship
He became an ACM Fellow for leadership and contributions to web search and data mining.
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As of October 2026
Leading AI for science
He is CityUHK's Chief of AI, director of the Hong Kong Institute of AI for Science and a chair professor in computer science. At Tsinghua AIR, he leads research focused on AI-driven drug discovery and generative AI for biology and chemistry.
Sources and credits
Photo: scholars.cityu.edu.hk; Wei-Ying MA - CityUHK Scholars; creator not stated. License: Not stated by source. Source: scholars.cityu.edu.hk. Cropped to a square and resized. Ask us to remove or replace this photo.