Yanting Ma
- Phone: 617-621-7556
- Email:
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Position:
Research / Technical Staff
Principal Research Scientist -
Education:
Ph.D., North Carolina State University, 2017 -
Research Areas:
External Links:
Yanting's Quick Links
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Biography
Yanting's research interests are mainly in algorithm design and analysis for inverse problems arising in computational sensing using statistical inference and optimization techniques. Additionally, she is generally interested in applied probability and convex analysis. Her PhD research focused on algorithmic and theoretical studies of approximate message passing, as well as provably convergent optimization algorithms for nonlinear diffractive imaging. Her postdoctoral work developed principled methods for dead time compensation for single-photon detectors based on Markov chain modeling.
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Recent News & Events
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EVENT MERL Contributes to ICASSP 2026 Date: Monday, May 4, 2026 - , May 8, 2026
Location: Barcelona, Spain
MERL Contacts: Wael H. Ali; Petros T. Boufounos; Chiori Hori; Jonathan Le Roux; Yanting Ma; Hassan Mansour; Yoshiki Masuyama; Joshua Rapp; Anthony Vetro; Pu (Perry) Wang; Gordon Wichern
Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Computational Sensing, Computer Vision, Machine Learning, Optimization, Signal Processing, Speech & AudioBrief- MERL has made numerous contributions to both the organization and technical program of ICASSP 2026, which is being held in Barcelona, Spain from May 4-8, 2026.
Sponsorship
MERL is proud to be a Silver Patron of the conference and will participate in the student job fair on Thursday, May 7. Please join this session to learn more about employment opportunities at MERL, including openings for research scientists, post-docs, and interns. MERL Distinguished Research Scientists Petros T. Boufounos and Jonathan Le Roux will also present a spotlight session on MERL’s research in signal processing on Tuesday, May 5 at 13:05.
MERL is also pleased to be the sponsor of two IEEE Awards that will be presented at the conference. We congratulate Prof. Nasir Ahmed, the recipient of the 2026 IEEE Fourier Award for Signal Processing, and Dr. Alex Acero, the recipient of the 2026 IEEE James L. Flanagan Speech and Audio Processing Award.
Technical Program
MERL is presenting 7 papers in the main conference on a wide range of topics including source separation, spatial audio, neural audio codecs, radar-based pose estimation, camera-based airflow sensing, radar array processing, and optimization. Another paper on neural speech codecs will be presented at the Low-Resource Audio Codec (LRAC) Satellite Workshop. MERL researchers will also present two articles published in IEEE Open Journal of Signal Processing (OJSP) on music source separation and head-related transfer function (HRTF) modeling. Finally, Speech and Audio Team members Yoshiki Masuyama and Jonathan Le Roux co-organized a Special Session on Neural Spatial Audio Processing, which will feature six oral presentations.
About ICASSP
ICASSP is the flagship conference of the IEEE Signal Processing Society, and the world's largest and most comprehensive technical conference focused on the research advances and latest technological development in signal and information processing. The event attracts more than 4000 participants each year.
- MERL has made numerous contributions to both the organization and technical program of ICASSP 2026, which is being held in Barcelona, Spain from May 4-8, 2026.
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EVENT MERL Contributes to ICASSP 2025 Date: Sunday, April 6, 2025 - , April 11, 2025
Location: Hyderabad, India
MERL Contacts: Wael H. Ali; Petros T. Boufounos; Radu Corcodel; Chiori Hori; Siddarth Jain; Toshiaki Koike-Akino; Jonathan Le Roux; Yanting Ma; Hassan Mansour; Yoshiki Masuyama; Joshua Rapp; Anthony Vetro; Pu (Perry) Wang; Gordon Wichern
Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Communications, Computational Sensing, Electronic and Photonic Devices, Machine Learning, Robotics, Signal Processing, Speech & AudioBrief- MERL has made numerous contributions to both the organization and technical program of ICASSP 2025, which is being held in Hyderabad, India from April 6-11, 2025.
Sponsorship
MERL is proud to be a Silver Patron of the conference and will participate in the student job fair on Thursday, April 10. Please join this session to learn more about employment opportunities at MERL, including openings for research scientists, post-docs, and interns.
MERL is pleased to be the sponsor of two IEEE Awards that will be presented at the conference. We congratulate Prof. Björn Erik Ottersten, the recipient of the 2025 IEEE Fourier Award for Signal Processing, and Prof. Shrikanth Narayanan, the recipient of the 2025 IEEE James L. Flanagan Speech and Audio Processing Award. Both awards will be presented in-person at ICASSP by Anthony Vetro, MERL President & CEO.
Technical Program
MERL is presenting 15 papers in the main conference on a wide range of topics including source separation, sound event detection, sound anomaly detection, speaker diarization, music generation, robot action generation from video, indoor airflow imaging, WiFi sensing, Doppler single-photon Lidar, optical coherence tomography, and radar imaging. Another paper on spatial audio will be presented at the Generative Data Augmentation for Real-World Signal Processing Applications (GenDA) Satellite Workshop.
MERL Researchers Petros Boufounos and Hassan Mansour will present a Tutorial on “Computational Methods in Radar Imaging” in the afternoon of Monday, April 7.
Petros Boufounos will also be giving an industry talk on Thursday April 10 at 12pm, on “A Physics-Informed Approach to Sensing".
About ICASSP
ICASSP is the flagship conference of the IEEE Signal Processing Society, and the world's largest and most comprehensive technical conference focused on the research advances and latest technological development in signal and information processing. The event has been attracting more than 4000 participants each year.
- MERL has made numerous contributions to both the organization and technical program of ICASSP 2025, which is being held in Hyderabad, India from April 6-11, 2025.
See All News & Events for Yanting -
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MERL Publications
- , "ProxiCBO: A Consensus-based Method for Composite Optimization", IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP), May 2026.BibTeX TR2026-041 PDF
- @inproceedings{Zhang2026may,
- author = {Zhang, Haoyu and Ma, Yanting and Kitichotkul, Ruangrawee and Rapp, Joshua and Boufounos, Petros T.},
- title = {{ProxiCBO: A Consensus-based Method for Composite Optimization}},
- booktitle = {IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP)},
- year = 2026,
- month = may,
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2026-041}
- }
- , "Application of Optimal Control to Time-Resolution Protocol for Quantum Sensing", Physical Review, DOI: 10.1103/1nsd-2574, Vol. 112, pp. 052608, November 2025.BibTeX TR2025-161 PDF
- @article{Lin2025nov,
- author = {Lin, Chungwei and Ding, Qi (Andy) and Ma, Yanting},
- title = {{Application of Optimal Control to Time-Resolution Protocol for Quantum Sensing}},
- journal = {Physical Review},
- year = 2025,
- volume = 112,
- pages = 052608,
- month = nov,
- doi = {10.1103/1nsd-2574},
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2025-161}
- }
- , "Simultaneous Range and Velocity Measurement with Doppler Single-Photon Lidar", Optica, DOI: 10.1364/OPTICA.555984, Vol. 12, pp. 604-613, April 2025.BibTeX TR2025-050 PDF
- @article{Kitichotkul2025apr,
- author = {Kitichotkul, Ruangrawee and Rapp, Joshua and Ma, Yanting and Mansour, Hassan},
- title = {{Simultaneous Range and Velocity Measurement with Doppler Single-Photon Lidar}},
- journal = {Optica},
- year = 2025,
- volume = 12,
- pages = {604--613},
- month = apr,
- doi = {10.1364/OPTICA.555984},
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2025-050}
- }
- , "Time-optimal single-scalar control on a qubit of unitary dynamics", Physical Review, DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.111.042602, Vol. 111, No. 4, pp. 042602, April 2025.BibTeX TR2025-048 PDF
- @article{Lin2025apr2,
- author = {Lin, Chungwei and Boufounos, Petros T. and Ma, Yanting and Wang, Yebin and Ding, Qi and Sels, Dries and Chien, Chih-Chun},
- title = {{Time-optimal single-scalar control on a qubit of unitary dynamics}},
- journal = {Physical Review},
- year = 2025,
- volume = 111,
- number = 4,
- pages = 042602,
- month = apr,
- doi = {10.1103/PhysRevA.111.042602},
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2025-048}
- }
- , "Doppler Single-Photon Lidar", IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP), DOI: 10.1109/ICASSP49660.2025.10888897, April 2025, pp. 1-5.BibTeX TR2025-028 PDF
- @inproceedings{Kitichotkul2025mar,
- author = {Kitichotkul, Ruangrawee and Rapp, Joshua and Ma, Yanting and Mansour, Hassan},
- title = {{Doppler Single-Photon Lidar}},
- booktitle = {IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP)},
- year = 2025,
- pages = {1--5},
- month = mar,
- publisher = {IEEE},
- doi = {10.1109/ICASSP49660.2025.10888897},
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2025-028}
- }
- , "ProxiCBO: A Consensus-based Method for Composite Optimization", IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP), May 2026.
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Software & Data Downloads
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Videos
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MERL Issued Patents
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Title: "Systems and Methods for Processing Multi-Modal Images"
Inventors: Ma, Yanting; Boufounos, Petros T.; Orlik, Philip V.; Rapp, Joshua
Patent No.: 12,518,513
Issue Date: Jan 6, 2026 -
Title: "Method for Tomographic Imaging of Object Reflectivity under Inhomogeneous Background Media"
Inventors: Mansour, Hassan; Ma, Yanting; Boufounos, Petros T.
Patent No.: 11,948,229
Issue Date: Apr 2, 2024 -
Title: "SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR IMAGE PROCESSING BASED ON OPTIMAL TRANSPORT AND EPIPOLAR GEOMETRY"
Inventors: Ma, Yanting; Liu, Dehong; Boufounos, Petros T.; Orlik, Philip V.
Patent No.: 11,842,504
Issue Date: Dec 12, 2023 -
Title: "Sensing using Inverse Multiple Scattering with Phaseless Measurements"
Inventors: Ma, Yanting; Lodhi, Muhammad Asad; Mansour, Hassan; Boufounos, Petros T.; Liu, Dehong
Patent No.: 11,635,394
Issue Date: Apr 25, 2023 -
Title: "System and Method for Tracking a Deformation"
Inventors: Aeron, Shuchin; Ma, Yanting; Boufounos, Petros T.; Mansour, Hassan
Patent No.: 11,500,086
Issue Date: Nov 15, 2022 -
Title: "Systems and Methods for Blind Multi-Spectral Image Fusion"
Inventors: Liu, Dehong; Yu, Lantao; Ma, Yanting; Mansour, Hassan; Boufounos, Petros T.
Patent No.: 11,481,876
Issue Date: Oct 25, 2022 -
Title: "Systems and Methods of Fusing Multi-angle View HD Images Based on Epipolar Geometry and Matrix Completion"
Inventors: Liu, Dehong; Ma, Yanting; Mansour, Hassan; Kamilov, Ulugbek; Taguchi, Yuichi; Boufounos, Petros T.; Vetro, Anthony
Patent No.: 10,212,410
Issue Date: Feb 19, 2019
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Title: "Systems and Methods for Processing Multi-Modal Images"
