Prof. Ma received his Ph. D. in Organic and Medicinal Chemistry from Fudan University in Shanghai, China, in 2012. During that time, he synthesized a great number of HIV-1 inhibitors, and discovered several promising HIV clinical candidates. After working as a chemical R& D engineer in Petro China Co. Ltd. for two years, he became an Assistate Professor at Dalian Medical University, China, in 2014.

His current research mainly concentrates on the general areas of medicinal chemistry, drug discovery and development, and mechanistic enzymology, with primary efforts on the structure-based design of antiviral and anticancer agents. Until now, he has designed and synthesized a great number of pyrimidine and pyrimidine fused hetercycles as potential HIV-1 RT, EGFRT790M, BTK, JAK3, FAK etc, inhibitors.