Brief Biography

Yifang Ma, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor at Department of Statistics and Data Science of Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech). He earned his Ph.D in mathematics in 2016 from School of Mathematical Sciences, Peking University. He was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO) and Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University from 2016 to 2019.  His research focus is on Network Science, Data Science and Computational Social Science, and he has published papers in top tier journals like Nature, PNAS, Nature Physics, The Journal of the American Medical Association, etc.

Research Interests

Computational Social Science

Network Science

Data Science

Science of Science

Professional Experience

2019.11-present        Assistant Professor

Department of Statistics and Data Science, Southern University of Science and Technology

2016.7-2019.09          Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

Education

2011.09-2016.07        Ph.D. in Mathematics

School of Mathematical Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China

2007.9-2011.7            Bachelor in Applied Mathematics

School of Mathematics and Systems Science, Beihang University, Beijing, China

2014.10-2016.06        Visiting Scholar

Center for Complex Network Research, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA

Publications

1.      Yifang Ma, Diego F.M. Oliveira, Teresa K. Woodruff and Brian Uzzi, Women who win prizes get less money and prestige. Nature, 565, 287-288 (2019)

2.      Diego F.M. Oliveira, Yifang Ma, Teresa K. Woodruff and Brian Uzzi, Comparison of National Institutes of Health Grant Amounts to First-Time Male and Female Principal Investigators. The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), 321(9):898-900 (2019).

3.      Michael Szell, Yifang Ma, Roberta Sinatra, A Nobel opportunity for interdisciplinarity. Nature Physics 14.11 (2018): 1075-1078

4.      Yifang Ma and Brian Uzzi, Scientific prize network predicts who pushes the boundaries of science. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), 115.50 (2018): 12608-12615.

5.      Lauren M Ataman, Yifang Ma, Francesca E Duncan, Brian Uzzi, Teresa K Woodruff, Quantifying the growth of oncofertility, Biology of Reproduction, 2018, 99(2), 263–265.

6.      Quantong Guo, Yanjun Lei, Xin Jiang, Yifang Ma, Guanying Huo, Zhiming Zheng, Epidemic spreading with activity-driven awareness diffusion on multiplex network, Chaos, 2016, 26(4): 043110.

7.      Yanjun Lei, Xin Jiang, Quantong Guo, Yifang Ma, Meng Li, Zhiming Zheng, Contagion processes on the static and activity driven coupling networks, Physical Review E, 2016, 93(3): 032308.

8.      Yifang Ma, Xin Jiang, Meng Li and Zhiming Zheng, Trapping on deterministic multiplex networks. Acta Physica Polonica B, 46 (2015) 789-800.

9.      Quantong Guo, Xin Jiang, Yanjun Lei, Meng Li, Yifang Ma and Zhiming Zheng, Two-stage effects of awareness cascade on epidemic spreading in multiplex networks, Physical Review E, 91 (2015) 012822.

10.  Yifang Ma, Xin Jiang, Meng Li and Zhiming Zheng, Characterizing the efficiency and catalytic effects of modular structures in information propagation. Europhysics Letters, 108 (2014) 48004.

11.  Yifang Ma, Xin Jiang, Meng Li, Xin Shen, Quantong Guo, Yanjun Lei and Zhiming Zheng, Identify the diversity of mesoscopic structures in networks: A mixed random walk approach. Europhysics Letters, 104 (2013) 18006.

12.  Meng Li, Xin Jiang, Yifang Ma, Xin Shen and Zhiming Zheng, Effect of mixing parts of modular networks on explosive synchronization. Europhysics Letters, 104 (2013) 58002.