Zerui "Jerry" Ma

Click here for a copy of my resumé.

Click here for my Github Page.

I am Zerui “Jerry” Ma, an undergraduate researcher at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. I major in B.S. in Computer Science with a specialization in AI/ML, B.S. in Data Science and B.A. in Mathematics.

I am a Research Assistant working with Dr. Mehak Gupta for her current research in deep learning and NLP with applications in healthcare, where my responsibility has been fine-tuning LLM with interview transcripts for personality and psychological disorder detection (Click here for research abstract). Our paper, AI Assistant for Socioeconomic Empowerment Using Federated Learning has been published to NLP4DH at NAACL 2025

I have an independent research topic on a Course Recommender System for University Curriculum (Click here for research abstract) mentored by Dr. Michael Hahsler of Computer Science at the Bobby B. Lyle School of Engineering, and Dr. Peter Moore of Mathematics at the Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences. The research has been published to AAAI Spring Symposium and to NCUR. It will be published for the Robert Mayer Fellowship by the end of the 2024-2025 school year.

I am looking for a Ph.D. position in Computer Science, with a focus on Machine Learning Theory and Natural Language Processing.

Research Interest

• Natural Language Processing
  • Transformer-based Models
  • Large Language Models
  • Computational Linguistics
• Theoretical Machine Learning
  • Neural Networks
  • Parallel Computing
• AI/ML Applications
  • ML with Medical Data
  • Computer Vision

Publications

1. A Recommender System Architecture for University Curriculum Advising: published to AAAI Spring Symposium, March 2025 (1st Author)
2. AI Assistant for Socioeconomic Empowerment Using Federated Learning: published to NLP4DH, organized with NAACL 2025, May 2025 (2nd Author)
3. Recommender System for Curriculum Advising: published to NCUR, April 2025 (1st Author)
4. Under Review: submission to EMNLP 2025 through ACL Rolling Review, February 2025 (2nd Author) Click here for research abstract
5. Under Review: submission to Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science (2nd Author) Click here for research abstract

Contact Me

• Email: jerryma@smu.edu
• LinkedIn: Zerui Ma

Relevant Courses

• Mathematics of Machine Learning
• Machine Learning in Python
• Algorithm Engineering
• Computer Architecture
• Partial Differential Equations and Boundary Value Problems
• Software Engineering & Senior Design

Personal Interests

My favorite quote:

“The only way to do great work is to love what you do.” - Steve Jobs