Yingpeng Ma

Yingpeng Ma 马英鹏

Imagination will take you everywhere.
— Albert Einstein

I'm currently a first-year Ph.D. student at University of Macau, advised by Prof. Derek F. Wong (黄辉).

Before that, I obtained my M.Sc. degree from University of Macau in 2026.
I earned my B.Eng. degree from Northwestern Polytechnical University in 2022, supervised by Prof. Chunwei Tian (田春伟).

I study AI-Driven Interactive Narrative. Recently, I have focused on designing AI Characters that are grounded in narrative logic, consistent in personality, and emotionally resonant.

Email / Google Scholar / GitHub / Twitter

Photo by Runnan

Education

Ph.D. in Computer Science @ University of Macau, 2026.08-2030.06 (expected)
Advisor: Prof. Derek F. Wong
M.Sc. in Computer Science @ University of Macau, 2024.08-2026.06
Advisor: Prof. Derek F. Wong
B.Eng. in Software Engineering @ Northwestern Polytechnical University, 2019.09-2022.07
Supervisor: Prof. Chunwei Tian

Experience

Research Intern @ Large Model Center, Shanghai AI Laboratory, 2025.08-2026.02 (Remote)
Supervised by Dr. Yun Luo
Research Assistant @ Westlake NLP, Westlake University, 2023.02-2024.07
Supervised by Prof. Yue Zhang
Research Intern @ Westlake NLP, Westlake University, 2022.08-2023.01
Supervised by Prof. Linyi Yang
Research Intern @ Perception Vision Group, Northwestern Polytechnical University, 2021.07-2022.07
Supervised by Prof. Chunwei Tian

News

[2026.07] Earned my M.Sc. degree from the University of Macau with the highest graduation distinction (Excellent).
[2026.05] One first author paper was accepted to the ICML 2026 main conference. Thrilled to have my first-authored paper accepted and looking forward to future contributions!
[2025.01] One paper was accepted to the COLING 2025 main conference.
[2023.05] One co-first author paper was accepted to the ACL 2023 main conference.
[2022.06] Earned my B.E. degree from NWPU in just 3 years and received the Excellent Graduation Thesis Award, supervised by Prof. Chunwei Tian.
[2020.08] Won National First Prize in the 15th National University Student Intelligent Car Competition.

Publications

* indicates equal contribution / co-first author
† Corresponding author

	Can LLM Agents Stick to the Script? A Benchmark for Long-Horizon Consistency in Interactive Narratives Yingpeng Ma, Jianhao Yan, Bei Shi, Ka Hou Kam, Runnan Wang, Xuebo Liu, Yulong Chen, Yue Zhang, Derek F. Wong^† International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML, CCF-A)*, 2026 Paper / arXiv / Code
	A Heterogeneous CNN with Transformers for Image Denoising Chunwei Tian, Tongtong Cheng, Yingpeng Ma, Qi Zhu, Bob Zhang^†, David Zhang IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics (JCR Q1), 2026 Paper
	Let’s Focus on Neuron: Neuron-Level Supervised Fine-tuning for Large Language Model Haoyun Xu, Runzhe Zhan, Yingpeng Ma, Derek F. Wong^†, Lidia S. Chao International Conference on Computational Linguistics (COLING, CCF-A), 2025 Paper / Code
	Measuring Consistency in Text-based Financial Forecasting Models Linyi Yang, Yingpeng Ma*, Yue Zhang^† Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL, CCF-A)*, 2023 Paper / arXiv / Code

Repositories

Star History chart for Awesome-Story-Generation

Awesome-Story-Generation
Yingpeng Ma, Yan Ma
GitHub Repository (-- stars)
This repository collects an extensive list of papers about Story Generation and Storytelling, focusing on the era of Large Language Models.

Honors & Awards

Excellent Graduation Thesis (rank 3/217), NWPU, 2022
Excellent Student Award, NWPU, 2021
Second-Class Scholarship (top 15%), NWPU, 2021
National First Prize, the 15th National University Student Intelligent Car Competition, Chinese Association of Automation, 2020

Miscellaneous

Previously, I was a Research Assistant at the Westlake NLP, supervised by Prof. Yue Zhang (张岳) and Prof. Linyi Yang (杨林易).

In addition to my supervisors, I am also deeply indebted to the guidance and support of my senior labmates: Dr. Jianhao Yan (颜建昊), Dr. Yun Luo (罗云), Dr. Runzhe Zhan (詹润哲), Prof. Yulong Chen (陈雨龙), and Dr. Yafu Li (李雅夫). Their pursuit of excellence continues to motivate and guide my academic journey.

Last but not least, I am grateful to my girlfriend, Runnan Wang (王润楠), for her unwavering love and companionship.