Wentao (Tony) Ma

Master Student @ University of Toronto

MLLM / GenAI / Robotics
26' Master of Applied Computing(CS) @ University of Toronto
24' MSc Computing(AIML) @ Imperial College London
23' Bachelor of Computer Science @ Beihang University

University of Toronto
College St, Toronto, ON, CA, M7A 1A2
Email: tonyyyma [at] gmail [dot] com

Open to Research Intern / Machine Learning Engineer / PhD

Introduction

The research areas I'm focusing on are MLLMs and GenAI. I enjoy improving and exploring the ability of MLLMs and Diffusion models and applying them to other fields like Robotics and Bio-Science.

Currently, I'm a Master's student at University of Toronto advised by Zhijing Jin. We focusing on developing foundation models for Long-audio understanding and generation. Also, I'm working closely with Wenhu Chen on the Long-Video understanding field.

Before that, I spent one fantastic year at Imperial College London and graduated with distinction, supervised by Edward Johns. We validate and improve the Multi-Modal pattern learning ability of VLMs and apply them to Robotics.

I got my bachelor's degree from Beihang University, School of ShenYuan Honors College, and my major is Computer Science.

I like photographing and I'm one of the members of Toronto Photo Walk(ToPW). I'm also interested in all kinds of sports, including snowboarding and tennis.

News

[03/2025] We publish Vamba, an Efficient Long-Video understanding model.
[01/2025] I become a Machine Learning Associate @ Vector Institute!
[10/2024] I grduate from MSc Computing Program @ Imperial with Distinction!
[09/2024] We introduce Paint2Plan, a VLM method enabling imitation leaning in Robotics.
[06/2024] I present the 'LLM Echo Chamber' project on MLCSS @Imperial.
[08/2023] I become a AWS Certified Solutions Architect!
[05/2023] I finish my graduation design at Beihang university with a paper published.
[01/2023] I finished interning with the Multi-Obj-Tracking project at Sony.
[06/2022] I join TikTok as an intern.

Research

Vamba: Understanding Hour-Long Videos with Hybrid Mamba-Transformers

Weiming Ren, Wentao Ma, Huan Yang, Cong Wei, Ge Zhang, Wenhu Chen

Preprint

[paper] [website]

Paint2Plan: Image Painting Enables Imitation Learning with VLMs

Tony Ma, Teyun Kwon, Edward Johns

Preprint

[paper] [website]

LLM Echo Chamber: personalized and automated disinformation

Tony Ma, Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye

Machine Leanrning and Cyber Security Symposium (MLCSS), Imperial, 2024

[paper] [code] [video]

Boosting Transferability of Adversarial Patches with Visual Relations

Tony Ma, Songze Li, Yisong Xiao, Shunchang Liu

Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), AdvVision Workshop, 2023

[paper]

Internships

Vector Institute

Machine Learning Associate

Designing a Geo-filtering RAG system with Global Spatial Technology Solutions(GSTS)

Jan.2025 - Present [website]

Smart Camera, Semiconductor Solutions Group, SONY

Edge AI Engineer Intern

Video Object Tracking / Model Qutilization / Edge Computing

Sep.2022 - Feb.2023 [website] [Project]

TikTok Pay, ByteDance

Software Engineer Intern

Objective-C / REST API / CICD

May.2022 - Aug.2022 [website]

Projects

Multi-Obj-Tracking
A Muti-object tracking model based on CenterNet

[link]

SysY-Compiler
a toy compiler of sys_y grammar

[link]

Hotel Renting System
A full stack Hotel renting system using Vue and Django

[link]

Selected Certifications and Awards

AWS Certified Solution Architect (Associate) --- 2026

Graduate with Distinction @ Imperial College London --- 2024

Outstanding Graduates of Beihang University --- 2023

Honorable Mention of Mathematical Contest in Modeling --- 2022

Scholarship for Academic Excellence of Beihang University --- 2020/2021/2022

Scholarship for Discipline Competitions of Beihang University --- 2020/2021/2022

Third Prize of Beijing Municipal Physics Competition --- 2020

Excellent Student Leader of Beihang university --- 2020

Student Work

University of Toronto --- Teaching Assistant for CSC209 --- 2025

Hurricane Skateboarding Club of Beihang University --- Director --- 2021

Honors College of Beihang University --- Mentor --- 2021

Student Union of Beihang University --- Leading Member --- 2020

Collaborate With (with no order)

@ University of Waterloo: Wenhu Chen, Weiming Ren,

@ University of Toronto: Zhijing Jin,

@ Imperial College: Dr.Edward Johns, Teyun Kwon, Dr.Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye, Sarthak Das

@ Beihang University: Dr.Xianglong Liu, Dr.Aishan Liu, Shunchang Liu, Songze Li

@ Sony: Mr.Bojie Zhang, Mr.Eric Gao

	Vamba: Understanding Hour-Long Videos with Hybrid Mamba-Transformers Weiming Ren, Wentao Ma, Huan Yang, Cong Wei, Ge Zhang, Wenhu Chen Preprint [paper] [website]
	Paint2Plan: Image Painting Enables Imitation Learning with VLMs Tony Ma, Teyun Kwon, Edward Johns Preprint [paper] [website]
	LLM Echo Chamber: personalized and automated disinformation Tony Ma, Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye Machine Leanrning and Cyber Security Symposium (MLCSS), Imperial, 2024 [paper] [code] [video]
	Boosting Transferability of Adversarial Patches with Visual Relations Tony Ma, Songze Li, Yisong Xiao, Shunchang Liu Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), AdvVision Workshop, 2023 [paper]

	Multi-Obj-Tracking A Muti-object tracking model based on CenterNet [link]
	SysY-Compiler a toy compiler of sys_y grammar [link]
	Hotel Renting System A full stack Hotel renting system using Vue and Django [link]