With an outstanding academic performance, Ma Zicheng, three-time recipient of the National Scholarship, believes that his abilities cannot be solely proven by a transcript. From classroom learning to student research projects, summer research programs, academic competitions, and industry practices, let's check out his trailblazing research journey together.
Ma Zicheng
· ZJU-UIUC Institute, '24 Computer Engineering
· Three-time recipient of the National Scholarship
· Finalist Winners in the Mathematical Contest in Modeling (MCM)
Further study destination: Master of Engineering degree in the study of Computational Science and Engineering, Harvard University
01 Starting Exploration and Practices
“When I talked to my high school classmates about my university experiences, I realized that our international campus has a distinctive focus on research and practice. From our freshman year, the campus actively encouraged us to participate in SRTP (Student Research Training Program) and arranged summer research projects based on our interests.” When Ma Zicheng first entered university, he didn’t have many expectations for the future and just wanted to focus on his assignments. However, the strong research atmosphere on campus constantly influenced and motivated him. He started to do research and apply his knowledge to practical projects: “In my freshman year, I joined a lab and worked on autonomous driving. At that time, my knowledge was limited and my discipline basic was weak, so I didn’t achieve much...”
In his sophomore year, Ma Zicheng began participating in various academic competitions. The experience of competing in the Mathematical Contest in Modeling (MCM) left a deep impression on him. “It was a tough battle,” he recalled. Ma Zicheng and his teammates Chen Ziyuan and Chen Zhirong chose the C problem on big data modeling, competing against over 10,000 teams worldwide. Fortunately, they had the guidance of their dedicated instructor, Professor Thomas Honold. He provided them with abundant resources for learning mathematical modeling, including two English books more relevant to the competition than the ones they had. Professor Honold also guided them to use a modeling competition resource website, which offered many valuable materials. During the winter break before the competition, they spent a month preparing. They studied “Python for Mathematical Experiments and Modeling” to familiarize themselves with various models, and by the end of the break, they had mastered and implemented common models in Python. They also learned how to use LaTeX and improved their writing skills. Ultimately, Ma Zicheng’s team won the Finalist Winners award (top 2%) in the MCM competition.
Through various competitions, he further enhanced his programming and modeling skills. Furthermore, during the summer research project after his sophomore year, Ma Zicheng joined Professor Wang Gaoang’s lab at ZJUI, embarking on research in computer vision. Under the guidance of Professor Wang Gaoang, he explored the self-supervised body pose estimation, designed a new unsupervised training process, unified the format of the data set, and carried out a lot of code practice on an industry-advanced framework to complete the design of the training and reasoning process. For the first time, he was able to put the ideas in head into reality and project what he had learned into reality. This summer research, let him really have a sense of the term “scientific research.” He also felt that he was beginning to be able to apply theoretical knowledge to practical research and real-world scenarios, and began to "really make some contributions.”
02 Finding Passion and Direction
Ma Zicheng’s year-long exchange at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) during his junior year was “crucial.” While taking the ECE391-Computer Systems Engineering course, he discovered his fascination and passion for computer systems—"Designing different modules and components, and then elegantly connecting them together, all these things captivated me so much." At UIUC, he continued his practice, joining Professor Tianyin Xu’s lab to explore cloud system stability. This research experience allowed him to deeply feel the enthusiasm and dedication of each researcher towards their projects. Over the summer, he wrote over 10,000 lines of code in rust, implementing rust versions of cloud controllers for industrial applications such as zookeeper and rabbitmq. At the same time, he and his team members introduced these codes into a set of verifiable framework, and carried out mathematical verification of the running logic of all codes by using relevant knowledge of verification in the programming language field to ensure the correctness of the codes. It also provides a framework for the verification process of subsequent developers. He studied, discussed, tackled challenges with outstanding researchers from various countries, and achieved a breakthrough (details to be supplemented). In this lab, he found that those around him were eager to communicate and share, driven by strong self-motivation. They worked extremely hard, investing a lot of time and effort in their research, but they did so with joy. From initial curiosity and confusion to finding his direction, he gradually aligned with these excellent peers. During this practice experience, not only did he achieve interim results in his papers, but he also published a paper at OSDI, a top conference in the field of computer systems. More importantly, he found his passion and direction.
In order to further expand the research scope and consolidate and apply the knowledge he has learned, he applied for an internship position in the Data Knowledge Intelligence Group of Microsoft Research Asia after the exchange study, and made outstanding contributions in assisting the work related to high-performance computing applications, helping product team to accelerate LLM’s inference spped and improve product usability. At the same time, he also participated in a LLM Agent project, which used LLM to automatically classify user feedback, reason and analyze emotional factors, and help engineers better understand problems existing in products. During the initial exploration in the industry, he gained a lot, also learned how some scientists in the industry used cutting-edge research to solve practical problems, and intuitively felt how scientific research results were transformed and applied to the industry.
It is worth mentioning that in addition to scientific research practice, he also helped the campus establish collabrations with Microsoft and opened up an exclusive recruitment channel tailored for campus students, helping more outstanding students on campus to apply what they have learned on the advanced industrial platforms.
03 Living a Colorful and Vibrant Life
Apart from academics and research, Ma Zicheng’s extracurricular life was vibrant and colorful. He served as the head of the Outreach Department of the Student Union of iZJU, securing sponsorships for campus events, negotiating student discounts with businesses, organizing lectures in collaboration with overseas study agencies, and co-hosting exchange activities with student unions from other universities. He founded the Aroma Coffee Club, organizing coffee tasting events that attracted over 80 new members. This experience honed his organizational and management skills while giving him a new hobby. “During the stressful application season, I enjoyed chatting with friends in the library café, grabbing a cup of coffee, which helped relieve a lot of pressure.” The diverse environment on campus and his exchange experience at UIUC allowed him to better understand and respect different cultural backgrounds, thinking modes, and behavioral habits, adapting to cross-cultural learning and living environments. “The training system on campus benefited me greatly. For instance, when applying for further studies, I found that, besides the transcript, our research and practical experiences also stood out, sometimes even better showcasing our qualities and abilities.”
At the UIUC commencement for the ZJUI Class of 2024, Ma Zicheng, as the student representative, expressed in his speech, “I believe almost all of us have taken part in SRTP or summer research. You may have struggled with those experiences, ‘wasting’ your summer vacation sitting in the lab. Thanks to our campus, these hands-on experiences dovetail with our great education, giving us the foundation to be professional engineers. Be proud of the amazing four years we have experienced. Be proud of the incredible engineering skills we own in present. Be proud of the boundless future that lie ahead. In the future, I believe we can make this world better with our engineering knowledge, with our passion and more importantly, with our love to this world. ”
Article and Photography: MA Zicheng
Translation: MA Zicheng, LI Yinan
Editing: LI Yinan; LIU Shuaiyin
Editing in charge: ZHANG Yi
Reviewer: YANG Yi