Martin Ziqiao Ma
@marstin.bsky.social
phd<<<1,1>>>(UMich);
ex<<<3,1>>>({MIT_IBM_Watson, Adobe, Amazon});
Make the community better @ACLMentorship @GrowAILikeChild
Herborium Lover, Fortune Teller, Pokémon Trainer, Szechuan Cuisine Chef.
https://mars-tin.github.io
ex<<<3,1>>>({MIT_IBM_Watson, Adobe, Amazon});
Make the community better @ACLMentorship @GrowAILikeChild
Herborium Lover, Fortune Teller, Pokémon Trainer, Szechuan Cuisine Chef.
https://mars-tin.github.io
@fredashi.bsky.social and I wrote a blog for our new mechinterp paper (arxiv.org/abs/2510.13796), including many unpublished and even negative results that we found meaningful to share.
An Open-Notebook Exploration of Emergent Grounding in LMs mars-tin.github.io/blogs/posts/...
An Open-Notebook Exploration of Emergent Grounding in LMs mars-tin.github.io/blogs/posts/...
An Open-Notebook Exploration of Emergent Grounding in LMs
How We Did This Curiosity-Driven Research? An Open-Notebook Exploration of Emergent Grounding in LMs
mars-tin.github.io
October 21, 2025 at 1:40 AM
@fredashi.bsky.social and I wrote a blog for our new mechinterp paper (arxiv.org/abs/2510.13796), including many unpublished and even negative results that we found meaningful to share.
An Open-Notebook Exploration of Emergent Grounding in LMs mars-tin.github.io/blogs/posts/...
An Open-Notebook Exploration of Emergent Grounding in LMs mars-tin.github.io/blogs/posts/...
Regrettably can’t attend #COLM2025 due to deadlines, but
Jane and Joyce will be presenting our work. :)
Jane is an exceptional undergraduate researcher and a great collaborator! Go meet her at COLM if you’re curious about her work on mechanistic interpretability, multimodality, & pragmatics!
Jane and Joyce will be presenting our work. :)
Jane is an exceptional undergraduate researcher and a great collaborator! Go meet her at COLM if you’re curious about her work on mechanistic interpretability, multimodality, & pragmatics!
Vision-Language Models are not yet pragmatically optimal.
We identify 3 key failures of pragmatic competence in referring expression generation with VLMs: (1) cannot uniquely refer to the referent, (2) include excessive or irrelevant information, and (3) misalign with human pragmatic preferences.
We identify 3 key failures of pragmatic competence in referring expression generation with VLMs: (1) cannot uniquely refer to the referent, (2) include excessive or irrelevant information, and (3) misalign with human pragmatic preferences.
October 5, 2025 at 10:43 PM
Regrettably can’t attend #COLM2025 due to deadlines, but
Jane and Joyce will be presenting our work. :)
Jane is an exceptional undergraduate researcher and a great collaborator! Go meet her at COLM if you’re curious about her work on mechanistic interpretability, multimodality, & pragmatics!
Jane and Joyce will be presenting our work. :)
Jane is an exceptional undergraduate researcher and a great collaborator! Go meet her at COLM if you’re curious about her work on mechanistic interpretability, multimodality, & pragmatics!
Reposted by Martin Ziqiao Ma
🚀 ACL ARR is looking for a Co-CTO to join me lead our amazing tech team and drive the future of our workflow. If you’re interested or know someone who might be, let’s connect!
RTs & recommendations appreciated.
RTs & recommendations appreciated.
🚨 ARR is looking for a volunteer Co-CTO to help improve tech infrastructure!
🛠️ Preferred:
• 5+ years in NLP research
• Git, CLI tools, Python, and basic HTML
• 2-year role, overlapping with current Co-CTO
Interested? DM @fredashi.bsky.social or email fhs@uwaterloo.ca
#ARR #ACL #NLProc
🛠️ Preferred:
• 5+ years in NLP research
• Git, CLI tools, Python, and basic HTML
• 2-year role, overlapping with current Co-CTO
Interested? DM @fredashi.bsky.social or email fhs@uwaterloo.ca
#ARR #ACL #NLProc
September 29, 2025 at 9:30 PM
🚀 ACL ARR is looking for a Co-CTO to join me lead our amazing tech team and drive the future of our workflow. If you’re interested or know someone who might be, let’s connect!
RTs & recommendations appreciated.
RTs & recommendations appreciated.
Unfortunately, I’ll be missing #ACL2025NLP this year — but here are a few things I’m excited about! 👇
July 28, 2025 at 6:19 AM
Unfortunately, I’ll be missing #ACL2025NLP this year — but here are a few things I’m excited about! 👇
📣 Excited to announce SpaVLE: #NeurIPS2025 Workshop on Space in Vision, Language, and Embodied AI!
Join us in San Diego to push the frontiers of spatial understanding and reasoning across CV, NLP, and robotics!
👉 space-in-vision-language-embodied-ai.github.io
Join us in San Diego to push the frontiers of spatial understanding and reasoning across CV, NLP, and robotics!
👉 space-in-vision-language-embodied-ai.github.io
July 14, 2025 at 8:13 PM
📣 Excited to announce SpaVLE: #NeurIPS2025 Workshop on Space in Vision, Language, and Embodied AI!
Join us in San Diego to push the frontiers of spatial understanding and reasoning across CV, NLP, and robotics!
👉 space-in-vision-language-embodied-ai.github.io
Join us in San Diego to push the frontiers of spatial understanding and reasoning across CV, NLP, and robotics!
👉 space-in-vision-language-embodied-ai.github.io
Reposted by Martin Ziqiao Ma
#CoreCognition #LLM #multimodal #GrowAI We spent 3 years to curate 1503 classic experiments spanning 12 core concepts in human cognitive development and evaluated on 230 MLLMs with 11 different prompts for 5 times to get over 3.8 millions inference data points.
A thread (1/n) - #ICML2025 ✅
A thread (1/n) - #ICML2025 ✅
June 30, 2025 at 6:07 AM
#CoreCognition #LLM #multimodal #GrowAI We spent 3 years to curate 1503 classic experiments spanning 12 core concepts in human cognitive development and evaluated on 230 MLLMs with 11 different prompts for 5 times to get over 3.8 millions inference data points.
A thread (1/n) - #ICML2025 ✅
A thread (1/n) - #ICML2025 ✅
Reposted by Martin Ziqiao Ma
New Paper Alert ‼️ Current VLMs completely fail human gaze understanding 🙀 and scaling does NO help ‼️
However, humans, since an extremely age 🧒, are extremely sensitive to other people's gaze 🙄 👀
No mentors, no labs, only pre-doc students, 111 VLMs, and we did it 😎
However, humans, since an extremely age 🧒, are extremely sensitive to other people's gaze 🙄 👀
No mentors, no labs, only pre-doc students, 111 VLMs, and we did it 😎
June 11, 2025 at 11:21 PM
New Paper Alert ‼️ Current VLMs completely fail human gaze understanding 🙀 and scaling does NO help ‼️
However, humans, since an extremely age 🧒, are extremely sensitive to other people's gaze 🙄 👀
No mentors, no labs, only pre-doc students, 111 VLMs, and we did it 😎
However, humans, since an extremely age 🧒, are extremely sensitive to other people's gaze 🙄 👀
No mentors, no labs, only pre-doc students, 111 VLMs, and we did it 😎
Reposted by Martin Ziqiao Ma
& @tianminshu.bsky.social (+ @marstin.bsky.social, @zhitinghu.bsky.social, @lianhui.bsky.social & more) will present “SimWorld: A World Simulator for Scaling Photorealistic Multi-Agent Interactions,” an @unrealengine.bsky.social-based sim that generates unlimited/diverse urban environments: (13/14)
SimWorld
SimWorld: A World Simulator for Scaling Photorealistic Multi-Agent Interactions
simworld-cvpr2025.maitrix.org
June 10, 2025 at 7:45 PM
& @tianminshu.bsky.social (+ @marstin.bsky.social, @zhitinghu.bsky.social, @lianhui.bsky.social & more) will present “SimWorld: A World Simulator for Scaling Photorealistic Multi-Agent Interactions,” an @unrealengine.bsky.social-based sim that generates unlimited/diverse urban environments: (13/14)
At Albuquerque Now :)
April 30, 2025 at 5:49 AM
At Albuquerque Now :)
See you at #NAACL2025! I will talk about grounded lexicon acquisition and scaling mechanistically grounded vision language models. Happy to chat if you are around :)
On my way to NAACL✈️! If you're also there and interested in grounding, don't miss our tutorial on "Learning Language through Grounding"!
Mark your calendar: May 3rd, 14:00-17:30, Ballroom A.
Another exciting collaboration with @marstin.bsky.social @kordjamshidi.bsky.social, Jiayuan, and Joyce!
Mark your calendar: May 3rd, 14:00-17:30, Ballroom A.
Another exciting collaboration with @marstin.bsky.social @kordjamshidi.bsky.social, Jiayuan, and Joyce!
April 29, 2025 at 11:28 PM
See you at #NAACL2025! I will talk about grounded lexicon acquisition and scaling mechanistically grounded vision language models. Happy to chat if you are around :)
Vision-Language Models are not yet pragmatically optimal.
We identify 3 key failures of pragmatic competence in referring expression generation with VLMs: (1) cannot uniquely refer to the referent, (2) include excessive or irrelevant information, and (3) misalign with human pragmatic preferences.
We identify 3 key failures of pragmatic competence in referring expression generation with VLMs: (1) cannot uniquely refer to the referent, (2) include excessive or irrelevant information, and (3) misalign with human pragmatic preferences.
April 23, 2025 at 5:55 PM
Vision-Language Models are not yet pragmatically optimal.
We identify 3 key failures of pragmatic competence in referring expression generation with VLMs: (1) cannot uniquely refer to the referent, (2) include excessive or irrelevant information, and (3) misalign with human pragmatic preferences.
We identify 3 key failures of pragmatic competence in referring expression generation with VLMs: (1) cannot uniquely refer to the referent, (2) include excessive or irrelevant information, and (3) misalign with human pragmatic preferences.
I won’t be attending #ICLR2025 in person since #NAACL2025 follows right after, but here are a few things I’m excited about (all time in EDT) ⬇️
April 19, 2025 at 1:53 AM
I won’t be attending #ICLR2025 in person since #NAACL2025 follows right after, but here are a few things I’m excited about (all time in EDT) ⬇️
Reposted by Martin Ziqiao Ma
📢 Join us for the ACL Mentorship Session
@naaclmeeting.bsky.social #NAACL2025
Mentors:
• @amuuueller.bsky.social
• @fredashi.bsky.social
• Jiayuan Mao
• @marstin.bsky.social
• Oana Ignat
• Weijia Shi
• @zhijingjin.bsky.social
@naaclmeeting.bsky.social #NAACL2025
Mentors:
• @amuuueller.bsky.social
• @fredashi.bsky.social
• Jiayuan Mao
• @marstin.bsky.social
• Oana Ignat
• Weijia Shi
• @zhijingjin.bsky.social
April 4, 2025 at 5:55 PM
📢 Join us for the ACL Mentorship Session
@naaclmeeting.bsky.social #NAACL2025
Mentors:
• @amuuueller.bsky.social
• @fredashi.bsky.social
• Jiayuan Mao
• @marstin.bsky.social
• Oana Ignat
• Weijia Shi
• @zhijingjin.bsky.social
@naaclmeeting.bsky.social #NAACL2025
Mentors:
• @amuuueller.bsky.social
• @fredashi.bsky.social
• Jiayuan Mao
• @marstin.bsky.social
• Oana Ignat
• Weijia Shi
• @zhijingjin.bsky.social
Meet VEGGIE 🥦
VEGGIE is an instructional video generative model trained solely with diffusion loss, designed for both video concept grounding and instruction-based editing. It effectively handles diverse video editing tasks by pixel-level grounded training in a multi-task learning setup. ⬇️
VEGGIE is an instructional video generative model trained solely with diffusion loss, designed for both video concept grounding and instruction-based editing. It effectively handles diverse video editing tasks by pixel-level grounded training in a multi-task learning setup. ⬇️
Introducing VEGGIE 🥦—a unified, end-to-end, and versatile instructional video generative model.
VEGGIE supports 8 skills, from object addition/removal/changing, and stylization to concept grounding/reasoning. It exceeds SoTA and shows 0-shot multimodal instructional & in-context video editing.
VEGGIE supports 8 skills, from object addition/removal/changing, and stylization to concept grounding/reasoning. It exceeds SoTA and shows 0-shot multimodal instructional & in-context video editing.
March 19, 2025 at 7:17 PM
Meet VEGGIE 🥦
VEGGIE is an instructional video generative model trained solely with diffusion loss, designed for both video concept grounding and instruction-based editing. It effectively handles diverse video editing tasks by pixel-level grounded training in a multi-task learning setup. ⬇️
VEGGIE is an instructional video generative model trained solely with diffusion loss, designed for both video concept grounding and instruction-based editing. It effectively handles diverse video editing tasks by pixel-level grounded training in a multi-task learning setup. ⬇️
Reposted by Martin Ziqiao Ma
I am looking for a postdoc. A serious-looking call coming soon, but this is to get it going. Topics include (but not limited to): LLMs (🫢!), multimodal LLMs, interaction+learning, RL, intersection with cogsci, ... see our work to get an idea:
yoavartzi.com/pubs
Plz RT 🙏
yoavartzi.com/pubs
Plz RT 🙏
Publications
yoavartzi.com
February 14, 2025 at 2:09 AM
I am looking for a postdoc. A serious-looking call coming soon, but this is to get it going. Topics include (but not limited to): LLMs (🫢!), multimodal LLMs, interaction+learning, RL, intersection with cogsci, ... see our work to get an idea:
yoavartzi.com/pubs
Plz RT 🙏
yoavartzi.com/pubs
Plz RT 🙏
[RT Appreciated]
I'm excited to join #ACL @aclmentorship.bsky.social as a mentor! Your ideas can help make mentorship more impactful. Let’s plan together!🚀
I'm excited to join #ACL @aclmentorship.bsky.social as a mentor! Your ideas can help make mentorship more impactful. Let’s plan together!🚀
We’re planning 12 monthly mentoring sessions for 2025, and we’d love your input! Have topic ideas or feedback? Want to nominate a panelist? Fill out this form and share your thoughts!
💡https://forms.gle/dURA4QUANH3pBxBG8
💡https://forms.gle/dURA4QUANH3pBxBG8
ACL YEAR-ROUND MENTORSHIP
We are a mentorship network that helps and supports junior researchers in natural language processing (NLP). Our aim is to promote equal access to advice on NLP career choices, initiating research in ...
mentorship.aclweb.org
January 28, 2025 at 8:45 PM
[RT Appreciated]
I'm excited to join #ACL @aclmentorship.bsky.social as a mentor! Your ideas can help make mentorship more impactful. Let’s plan together!🚀
I'm excited to join #ACL @aclmentorship.bsky.social as a mentor! Your ideas can help make mentorship more impactful. Let’s plan together!🚀
Submission #1 is in the bag, but we know your masterpiece is next, don’t keep us waiting. 😎
Also, consider joining the program committee and help shape the future of alignment research. Your reviews might just steer the field! forms.gle/MapXyCZhbcFr...
Also, consider joining the program committee and help shape the future of alignment research. Your reviews might just steer the field! forms.gle/MapXyCZhbcFr...
January 14, 2025 at 11:33 PM
Submission #1 is in the bag, but we know your masterpiece is next, don’t keep us waiting. 😎
Also, consider joining the program committee and help shape the future of alignment research. Your reviews might just steer the field! forms.gle/MapXyCZhbcFr...
Also, consider joining the program committee and help shape the future of alignment research. Your reviews might just steer the field! forms.gle/MapXyCZhbcFr...
Reposted by Martin Ziqiao Ma
RepL4NLP (collocated with NAACL 2025) is inviting submissions!
📣📣 Call for papers #Repl4NLP @naaclmeeting.bsky.social
Consider submitting your work -full papers, extended abstracts, or cross-submissions!
✨ Direct paper submission deadline: Jan 30, 2025
✨ ARR commitment deadline: Feb 20, 2025
More details on our website: sites.google.com/view/repl4nl...
Consider submitting your work -full papers, extended abstracts, or cross-submissions!
✨ Direct paper submission deadline: Jan 30, 2025
✨ ARR commitment deadline: Feb 20, 2025
More details on our website: sites.google.com/view/repl4nl...
10th Workshop on Representation Learning for NLP - Call for Papers
The 10th Workshop on Representation Learning for NLP (RepL4NLP 2025), co-located with NAACL 2025 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, invites papers of a theoretical or experimental nature describing recent ad...
sites.google.com
December 27, 2024 at 7:23 AM
RepL4NLP (collocated with NAACL 2025) is inviting submissions!
Excited to co-organize the #ICLR2025 Workshop on Bidirectional Human-AI Alignment (Bi-Align). Big thanks to an amazing team and speaker lineup!
We call for non-archival papers: 2-page (tiny), 4-page (short), or 9-page (long).
👉 openreview.net/group?id=ICLR.…
See you in Singapore :)
We call for non-archival papers: 2-page (tiny), 4-page (short), or 9-page (long).
👉 openreview.net/group?id=ICLR.…
See you in Singapore :)
December 9, 2024 at 9:52 PM
Excited to co-organize the #ICLR2025 Workshop on Bidirectional Human-AI Alignment (Bi-Align). Big thanks to an amazing team and speaker lineup!
We call for non-archival papers: 2-page (tiny), 4-page (short), or 9-page (long).
👉 openreview.net/group?id=ICLR.…
See you in Singapore :)
We call for non-archival papers: 2-page (tiny), 4-page (short), or 9-page (long).
👉 openreview.net/group?id=ICLR.…
See you in Singapore :)
I first met Jaemin at the Microsoft Accelerate Foundation Models Research (AFMR) dinner during NeurIPS 2023, though I was already familiar with his papers long before that. He’s definitely a strong candidate to consider!
🚨 I’m on the academic job market!
j-min.io
I work on ✨Multimodal AI✨, advancing reasoning in understanding & generation by:
1⃣ Making it scalable
2⃣ Making it faithful
3⃣ Evaluating + refining it
Completing my PhD at UNC (w/ @mohitbansal.bsky.social).
Happy to connect (will be at #NeurIPS2024)!
👇🧵
j-min.io
I work on ✨Multimodal AI✨, advancing reasoning in understanding & generation by:
1⃣ Making it scalable
2⃣ Making it faithful
3⃣ Evaluating + refining it
Completing my PhD at UNC (w/ @mohitbansal.bsky.social).
Happy to connect (will be at #NeurIPS2024)!
👇🧵
December 8, 2024 at 6:20 PM
I first met Jaemin at the Microsoft Accelerate Foundation Models Research (AFMR) dinner during NeurIPS 2023, though I was already familiar with his papers long before that. He’s definitely a strong candidate to consider!
Reposted by Martin Ziqiao Ma
I'll be in Vancouver for NeurIPS from Dec 10 to 14. Happy to chat with people!
Find me at
- Dec 10: Future NLP Workshop with UBC NLP
- Dec 12: Vector Luncheon
- Dec 14: Pluralistic Alignment Workshop, presenting the VLM frame of reference analysis work with the amazing @marstin.bsky.social
Find me at
- Dec 10: Future NLP Workshop with UBC NLP
- Dec 12: Vector Luncheon
- Dec 14: Pluralistic Alignment Workshop, presenting the VLM frame of reference analysis work with the amazing @marstin.bsky.social
December 4, 2024 at 6:48 PM
I'll be in Vancouver for NeurIPS from Dec 10 to 14. Happy to chat with people!
Find me at
- Dec 10: Future NLP Workshop with UBC NLP
- Dec 12: Vector Luncheon
- Dec 14: Pluralistic Alignment Workshop, presenting the VLM frame of reference analysis work with the amazing @marstin.bsky.social
Find me at
- Dec 10: Future NLP Workshop with UBC NLP
- Dec 12: Vector Luncheon
- Dec 14: Pluralistic Alignment Workshop, presenting the VLM frame of reference analysis work with the amazing @marstin.bsky.social
A few updates :)
1. Presenting perspective-taking in machine theory of mind at the UMich tomorrow.
2. Visiting the UW on Dec 5 to talk about language grounding, let’s connect if you’re in Seattle.
3. Attending #NeurIPS2024 in Vancouver with a conference and workshop paper, DMs open!
1. Presenting perspective-taking in machine theory of mind at the UMich tomorrow.
2. Visiting the UW on Dec 5 to talk about language grounding, let’s connect if you’re in Seattle.
3. Attending #NeurIPS2024 in Vancouver with a conference and workshop paper, DMs open!
December 2, 2024 at 3:28 PM
A few updates :)
1. Presenting perspective-taking in machine theory of mind at the UMich tomorrow.
2. Visiting the UW on Dec 5 to talk about language grounding, let’s connect if you’re in Seattle.
3. Attending #NeurIPS2024 in Vancouver with a conference and workshop paper, DMs open!
1. Presenting perspective-taking in machine theory of mind at the UMich tomorrow.
2. Visiting the UW on Dec 5 to talk about language grounding, let’s connect if you’re in Seattle.
3. Attending #NeurIPS2024 in Vancouver with a conference and workshop paper, DMs open!