Dr. Minhua Eunice Ma 马敏华

B.A. (Shanghai 1995), M.A. (Shanghai 1998), M.Sc. (Newcastle 2001), Ph.D. (Ulster 2006)

Research Associate
School of Computing and Information Engineering
Room 1F125, University of Ulster, Jordanstown campus
Shore Road, Newtownabbey, Co. Antrim, BT37 0QB
United Kingdom

Email: m.ma@ulster.ac.uk
Tel: +44-(0)28 903 68737 (Office), +44-(0)28 903 66035 (Lab)

Research interests

• Virtual Reality and its application in rehabilitation
• 3D graphics, physically-based simulation, virtual human animation
• Serious games in rehabilitation
• Natural Language Processing, lexical semantics

Publications

Journal papers

[1]       Ma, Minhua and P. McKevitt (2006) Virtual Human Animation in Natural Language Visualisation. Special Issue on Research in Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science, Artificial Intelligence Review (25), Creaney, N. (Ed.), Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer-Academic Publishers.

[2]       Ma, Minhua and P. McKevitt (2004) Interval relations in visual semantics of verbs. Special Issue on Research in Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science, Artificial Intelligence Review (21): 293-316, Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer-Academic Publishers.

[3]       Ma, Minhua (1999) The relationship among fundamental frequency, f1, f2, and energy of vowel. In Journal of Shanghai Normal University (28):205-209 (ISSN: 1004-8634).

Book chapters/papers

[4]       Ma, Minhua, M. McNeill, S. McDonough, and J. Crosbie (2007) Adaptive Virtual Reality Games for Therapeutic Exercises. Lecture Notes in Computer Science series (LNCS): Proceedings of the International Conference on Universal Access in Human-Computer Interaction (UAHCI 2007), Berlin, Germany: Springer. (Accepted)

[5]       Ma, Minhua and P. McKevitt (2004) Visual semantics and ontology of eventive verbs. Natural Language Processing - IJCNLP-04, First International Joint Conference, Keh-Yih Su, Jun-Ichi Tsujii, Jong-Hyeok Lee and Oi Yee Kwong (Eds.), 187-196, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (LNAI) series, LNCS 3248. Berlin, Germany: Springer Verlag. Also published in Proceedings of the First International Joint Conference on Natural Language Processing (IJCNLP-04), Keh-Yih Su and Jun-Ichi Tsujii (Eds.), 278-285, Resort Golden Palm, Sanya, China, March. (best paper award).

[6]       Ma, Minhua (Translate) (1999) The Hsiungnu Language (book chapter). In the Chinese version of The Consonant System of Old Chinese (E.G. Pwlleyblank), W. Pan (Translate), 163-201, Beijing, China: Chinese Press. (ISBN: 7-101-02225-1)

[7]       Ma, Minhua (1998) Computational linguistics (book chapter). In New Methods in Dialectology, W. Pan (Ed.), 192-218, Shanghai, China: Shanghai Education Press.

[8]       Ma, Minhua (Translate) (1997) Shift Chains in System. In Chinese version of Principles of Linguistic Change (W. Labov 1994), W. Pan (Ed.), Shanghai, China: Shanghai Translation Publishing House.

Conference papers (Refereed)

[9]       Ma, Minhua, M. McNeill, D. Charles, S. McDonough, and J. Crosbie (2006) Virtual Reality Games for Motor Rehabilitation. In Proc. Of  the 9th International Conference on Computer Games: AI, Animation, Mobile, Educational & Serious Games, Q. Mehdi, F. Mtenzi, B. Duggan, and H McAtamney (Eds.), 143-150, Dublin Institute of Technology, Dublin, Ireland, 22-24 November. (ISBN: 0-9549016-2-2)

[10]   Ma, Minhua, M. McNeill, D. Charles, S. McDonough, and J. Crosbie (2006) Physics-based Virtual Reality for Post-stroke Rehabilitation. In Proc. Of  the Eurographics Ireland 2006 Workshop, C. Noonan (Ed), Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design & Technology, Dun Laoghaire, Ireland, 31 October.

[11]   Ma, Minhua, M. McNeill, S. McDonough, J. Crosbie, and L. Oliver (2006) Physics Fidelity of Virtual Reality in Motor Rehabilitation. In Virtual: a Real Success: Proc. Of the 8th International Conference on Virtual Reality (VRIC—Laval Virtual 2006), S. Richir and E. Klinger (Eds.), 35-41, Laval, France, 26-30 April.

[12]   Ma, Minhua and P. McKevitt (2005) Presenting Temporal Relations of Virtual Human Actions by Multiple Animation Channels. In Proc. of the 16th Irish Conference on Artificial Intelligence & Cognitive Science (AICS-05), N. Creaney (Ed.), 169-178, Flowerfield Arts Centre, Portstewart, University of Ulster, Northern Ireland, 7-9 September.

[13]   Ma, Minhua and P. McKevitt (2005) Lexical Semantics and Auditory Display in Virtual Storytelling. In Proc. of the 11th International Conference on Auditory Display 2005 (ICAD05), E. Brazil (Ed.), 358-363, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland, 6-9 July.

[14]   Ma, Minhua and P. McKevitt (2005) Animating Virtual Humans in Intelligent Multimedia Storytelling. In Proc. of the 6th Annual PGNET Conference: The convergence of telecommunications, networking and broadcasting (PGNET 2005), M. Merabti and R. Pereira (Eds.), 159-164, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, England, June.

[15]   Ma, Minhua and P. McKevitt (2004) Using Lexical Knowledge of Verbs in Language-to-Vision Applications. In Proc. of the 15th Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science Conference (AICS-04), L. McGinty and B. Crean (Eds.), 255-264, Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, Castlebar, Ireland, September.

[16]   Ma, Minhua and P. McKevitt (2003) Building character animation for intelligent storytelling with the H-Anim standard. In Eurographics Ireland Chapter Workshop Proceedings 2003, M. McNeill (Ed.), 9-15, Coleraine, University of Ulster, Northern Ireland, April.

[17]   Ma, Minhua and P. McKevitt (2003) Semantic representation of events in 3D animation. In Proceedings of The Fifth International Workshop on Computational Semantics (IWCS-5), H. Bunt, I. van der Sluis and R. Morante (Eds.), 253-281, Tilburg, The Netherlands, January.

Theses

[18]   Ma, Minhua (2006) Automatic Conversion of Natural Language to 3D Animation. Ph.D. thesis, School of Computing & Intelligent Systems, University of Ulster, Derry, N. Ireland.

[19]   Ma, Minhua (2001) Searching TV programs using teletext subtitles. M.Sc. thesis, School of Computing Science, University of Newcastle, Newcastle upon Tyne, U.K.

[20]   Ma, Minhua (1998) The Phonetics Features and Prosodic Structure of the Stress Patterns in Mandarin. M.A. thesis, Linguistics Institute, Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai, China.