Hello, I'm

Da Ma

PhD Student in Electrical and Computer Engineering

Researching High-Performance Computing

  • Numerical Methods
  • Sparse Linear Algebra
  • Code Transformation
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Da Ma
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About Me

I am a PhD student in Electrical and Computer Engineering at McMaster University. I belong to the Swiftware Lab led by Dr. Kazem Cheshmi. My research focuses on numerical methods, sparse linear algebra, and code transformation targeting GPU optimizations.

Prior to my PhD, I earned my Bachelor of Applied Science (with Honours) in Computer Engineering from the University of Toronto. I also spent a year as a Software Engineer at Intel Corporation, working on FPGA memory controller optimization and embedded firmware development.

Education

McMaster University

PhD, Electrical and Computer Engineering

Sept. 2024 - Present

University of Toronto

BASc (with Honours), Computer Engineering

Sept. 2019 - May 2024

Experience

Teaching Assistant

McMaster University, Hamilton, ON Canada
COMPENG 4SP4 High-Performance Programming Sept. 2025 - Dec. 2025
COMPENG 4TN4 Image Processing Jan. 2025 - May 2025
  • Prepared course materials and led tutorial and laboratory sessions
  • Provided technical advising for student projects, offering guidance on implementation and debugging
  • Assessed and evaluated student performance on assignments, laboratory reports, projects, and exams

Software Engineer

Intel Corporation, San Jose, CA USA May 2022 - May 2023
  • Optimized FPGA memory controller performance by fine-tuning parameters through experimental evaluation
  • Implemented embedded firmware algorithms to meet specification requirements, validated functionality through simulation frameworks
  • Developed and maintained project tracking dashboards and technical documentation for the FPGA team
  • Performed FPGA signal tracing and protocol analysis, documenting anomalies and providing actionable feedback

Publications

SC '25

Sparsified Preconditioned Conjugate Gradient Solver on GPUs

Da Ma, Khalid Ahmad, Kazem Cheshmi, Hari Sundar, Mary Hall

SC '25: The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis

St. Louis, MO, USA - November 2025

DOI

Research Projects

Submitted

Enumerate-and-Sparse-Coarsen for Matrix Multiplication in GPUs

Hossein Albakri, Da Ma, Mahdi Salehi, Kazem Cheshmi

Under Review at PLDI '26

Submitted

Transforming Loop-Carried Dependence for Parallelism in GPUs

Da Ma, Mahdi Salehi, Amirmohammad Tavakkoli, Mary Hall, Kazem Cheshmi

Under Review at ICS '26

In Preparation

Active-Set-based QP Solver for Quadrotor Model Predictive Control

Da Ma, Kazem Cheshmi

Completed

Software Memory Cache Replacement in Data Centre with LSTM

Rudy Jin, Da Ma, Haoran Yin, Chengyi Zhou

Bachelor Capstone, supervised by Dr. Mark C. Jeffrey

April 2024

Completed

FSM-Augmented Stride Prefetcher with Adaptive Aggressiveness Control

Da Ma, Haoran Yin

Competitive Course Project, awarded bonus marks

November 2023

Completed

Extended TAGE-Based Branch Predictor

Da Ma, Haoran Yin

Competitive Course Project, awarded bonus marks

October 2023

Skills & Expertise

Programming Languages

C/C++ Python Rust Bash Verilog ARM Assembly SQL HTML/CSS

High Performance Computing

CUDA CuPy Triton Numba

Compiler Frameworks

LLVM MLIR

Hardware Platforms

x86/ARM CPUs NVIDIA GPUs ARM Cortex-M MCUs FPGA (DE1-SoC) Teensy 4.1 Crazyflie

Tools & Simulation

NVIDIA Nsight Compute Quartus ModelSim MATLAB Simulink ROS Gazebo NVIDIA Isaac Sim

Mathematics

Linear Algebra Numerical Methods Calculus Engineering Mathematics

Get in Touch

I'm always open to discussing research collaborations, job opportunities, or just chatting about research topics. If you are interested in playing Apex Legends with me, I'm always down for that too.

Email mad29@mcmaster.ca Phone (+1) 416-838-2570
Location Hamilton, ON, Canada