Yingpeng Ma

I'm a Ph.D. student at the University of Macau. I think AI will soon do much of our work, and I'm curious how it can also make the time we get back more joyful and meaningful.

I'm advised by Prof. Derek F. Wong (黄辉). Before my Ph.D., I received my M.Sc. from the University of Macau in 2026, and my B.Eng. from Northwestern Polytechnical University in 2022, supervised by Prof. Chunwei Tian (田春伟). I was also a Research Assistant at Westlake NLP, supervised by Prof. Yue Zhang (张岳) and Prof. Linyi Yang (杨林易).

Education

M.Sc. & Ph.D. in Computer Science @ University of Macau, 2024-2026 & 2026-Present
Advisor: Prof. Derek F. Wong
B.Eng. in Software Engineering @ Northwestern Polytechnical University, 2019-2022 (early graduation)
Supervisor: Prof. Chunwei Tian

Experience

Research Intern @ Large Model Center, Shanghai AI Laboratory, Aug 2025-Feb 2026 (Remote)
Supervised by Dr. Yun Luo
Research Assistant @ Westlake NLP, Westlake University, Feb 2023-Jul 2024
Supervised by Prof. Yue Zhang
Research Intern @ Westlake NLP, Westlake University, Aug 2022-Jan 2023
Supervised by Prof. Linyi Yang
Research Intern @ Perception Vision Group, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Jul 2021-Jul 2022
Supervised by Prof. Chunwei Tian

News

[Jul 2026] Received my M.Sc. from the University of Macau with the highest graduation distinction (Excellent).
[May 2026] A first-author paper was accepted to ICML 2026 (main conference).
[Feb 2026] A paper was accepted to IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics.
[Jan 2025] A paper was accepted to COLING 2025 (main conference).
[May 2023] A co-first-author paper was accepted to ACL 2023 (main conference).
[Jun 2022] Received my B.Eng. from NWPU a year early, with the Excellent Graduation Thesis Award, supervised by Prof. Chunwei Tian.
[Aug 2020] Won the National First Prize in the 15th National University Student Intelligent Car Competition.

My research runs along two lines: AI that works with us, and AI that we enjoy spending time with. Both center on long-horizon, real interactions between AI and people.

Selected 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

All Publications

	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
	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-B), 2025 Paper / 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

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

Highest Graduation Distinction (Excellent), M.Sc., University of Macau, 2026
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

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.