Dr. Ma obtained her B.Sc. (Cell Biology and Genetics) and M.Sc. (Experimental Medicine) degrees from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. She then graduated with a Ph.D. degree from The University of Hong Kong (HKU) with an outstanding ranking and was awarded the Li Ka Shing Prize for the Best PhD Thesis of that year.... READ MORE Since then, she has been working at The University of Hong Kong where she is currently an Associate Professor and Associate Director (Knowledge Exchange and Global) in the School of Biomedical Sciences at the Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine (HKUMed). Dr. Ma also currently serves as the Academic Lead of the Imaging and Flow Cytometry Core / Bioreagent Core / Bioresearch Support Core of the Centre for PanorOmic Sciences at HKUMed, and is also a Principal Investigator at the State Key Laboratory of Liver Research at HKU. Dr. Ma’s research interest is on exploiting stemness as a cancer cell vulnerability. According to the ISI Essential Science Indicator, Dr. Ma has been listed, from 2010 to 2018, as the top 1% of most-cited scholars under the category of ‘clinical medicine’ and ‘all fields’. She is also the recipient of the 2008 Young Scientist Award in Life Sciences from the Hong Kong Institution of Science, the 2012-13 Outstanding Young Researcher Award from HKU, the 2014 Croucher Innovation Award, the 2014 Scientific Research Outstanding Achievement Awards (Second-class Award in Science and Technology Section) from the Higher Education Institution of China, the 2017 University of British Columbia Alumni Builder Award (Canada), the 2018 Ton Duc Thang University Scientific Prize – Rising Star Award (Vietnam) as well as the 2021 Research Grants Council (RGC) Research Fellow Scheme. Dr. Ma is a Founding Member of the Hong Kong Young Academy of Sciences in which she currently serves as Vice-President and Co-Chair of their Outreach Committee. She is also a member of the Future Forum Young Scientist Innovation Alliance in China. She is a member of the Board of Directors at Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation, as well as the International Society of Differentiation. She is an Associate Editor of Experimental Cell Research and an Editorial Board Member of Hepatology, Carcinogenesis and Differentiation.
