Dr Ning Ma

School of Computer Science

Lecturer in Medical Computing

Member of the Pervasive Computing research group

Member of the Speech and Hearing research group

Ning Ma
Profile picture of Ning Ma
n.ma@sheffield.ac.uk
+44 114 222 1839

Full contact details

Dr Ning Ma
School of Computer Science
Regent Court (DCS)
211 Portobello
Sheffield
S1 4DP
Profile

Ning is a Lecturer in Medical Computing at the Department of Computer Science, University of Sheffield, and also an Academic Directorate of Medical Imaging and Medical Physics at the Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. Before that he was a Research Fellow in Computer Science working on health-related research projects. His first degree was in Computer Science from South China University of Technology and he has a PhD in hearing inspired automatic speech processing from the University of Sheffield.

Ning’s research interests lie in speech and hearing technologies, machine learning and healthcare. In particular, his research interests focus on development of AI systems that can interpret sounds and low-cost sensor data and extract useful information for screening health issues, such as sleep-disordered breathing and respiratory diseases. He has been PI and Co-PI of several UKRI and HEIF grants on acoustic monitoring of sleep-disordered breathing and cough sound analysis for tuberculosis screening. He is also interested in music AI technology and its link with mental health.

Ning has published 60+ refereed journals and conference papers. He is on the Technical Programme Committee for INTERSPEECH 2023 and 2024 as the Lead Area Chair for Speech, voice, and hearing disorders. He regularly reviews manuscripts and grants for a range of journals and funders.

Ning is a Insigneo Institute Research Theme Co-Director for Healthcare data/AI. He is a member of the British Sleep Society, the British Thoracic Society and IEEE.

Research interests
  • Acoustic monitoring for healthcare, including sleep disordered breathing and respiratory conditions
  • Multimodal machine learning for health applications
  • Speech and hearing technology
  • Hearing impairment and cochlear implant processing
Publications

Show: Featured publications All publications

Journal articles

Conference proceedings papers

All publications

Journal articles

Conference proceedings papers

Preprints

  • Tu Z, Deadman J, Ma N & Barker J (2022) Auditory-Based Data Augmentation for End-to-End Automatic Speech Recognition, arXiv. RIS download Bibtex download
  • Romero HE, Ma N, Brown GJ, Beeston AV & Hasan M (2019) Deep Learning Features for Robust Detection of Acoustic Events in Sleep-Disordered Breathing, arXiv. RIS download Bibtex download
  • Vecchiotti P, Ma N, Squartini S & Brown GJ (2019) End-to-end Binaural Sound Localisation from the Raw Waveform, arXiv. RIS download Bibtex download
Grants

Research Grants

  • Home Monitoring of Paediatric Sleep Disordered Breathing with Unobtrusive Sensors, MRC IAA scheme, 05/2024 - 10/2025, £74,822, as PI
  • Advance Acoustic AI Technology for Low-cost Tuberculosis Screening, RCUK, 04/2024 - 06/2025, £113,972, as Co-I
  • Speech and Acoustic Technology for Transgender Voice, Research England, 04/2023 - 06/2023, £5,000, as PI
  • AI-Enabled Cough Sound Analysis for Tuberculosis Screening, EPSRC IAA programme, 03/2023 - 10/2023 £27,434, as PI
  • Monitoring sleep disordered breathing of long-Covid patients at home using acoustic AI Technology, Research England HEIF, 01/2022 - 07/2022, £71,222, as PI
  • Artificial Musical Intelligence (AMI): Building Relationships and Identifying Use Cases with Creative Practitioners, HEIF, 12/2021 - 06/2023, £19,820, as Co-I
  • SOMNUS: Sleep disOrder MoNitoring by Unobtrusive Sensors, Innovate UK, 07/2021 - 11/2023, £230,649, as Co-I
  • Making Elektra, Research England, 02/2021 - 04/2021, £6,236, as Co-I
  • Brahms: Breathing Resistance Assessment via Home Monitoring of Sleep, Innovate UK, 06/2019 - 02/2021, £109,600, as Co-I
  • MAI: Musical Artificial Intelligence, HEFCE, 02/2019 - 05/2020, £53,408, as Co-I
Professional activities and memberships
  • I am on the Technical Programme Committee for INTERSPEECH 2023 and 2024 as the Lead Area Chair for Speech, voice, and hearing disorders. I regularly review manuscripts and grants for a range of journals and funders.
  • Member of the British Sleep Society
  • Member of the British Thoracic Society
  • Insigneo Institute Research Theme Co-Director for Healthcare data/AI