An assistant professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), Dr. Ma was chosen for her excellence in teaching, involvement and impact with her students, intellectual integrity and scholarship, and impact on postgraduate success of her students. Candidates for this recognition are untenured junior faculty members from aerospace engineering and mechanical engineering, in addition to ECE.

Dr. Ma specializes in digital signal processing, with specific research interests in signal processing for communications and networks, signal estimation algorithms, coding theory, wireless communication theory, and sensor and ad hoc networks. She has been with ECE since 2005 and is a member of the Center for Signal and Image Processing.