Kevin Ma | UC Berkeley

About Me

I am a Design PhD student in the Co-Design Lab at UC Berkeley, which is advised by Prof. Kosa Goucher-Lambert and is closely associated with the Berkeley Institute of Design. I completed my BS in Mechanical Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin, and during that time, I conducted research in COVID-19 risk modelling under the supervision of Prof. Michael Lachmann and Prof. Jennifer Johnson-Leung.

During my PhD, I have worked with Prof. Can Liu from the City University of Hong Kong to study how generative AI can support designers through the creative process. I have had close collaborations with Daniele Grandi from AutoDesk Research and Prof. Chris McComb from Carnegie Mellon University studying LLMs capabilities in the design process. I have also done an internship at HP Inc. under the supervision of Dr. Jaewoo Chung, researching the design of AI conversational agents to support team collaboration design tasks.

Sincec January 2024, I have been a research intern at the NASA Langley Research Center under the supervision of Dr. Eric Brubaker researching topics surrounding human-AI interaction, cognitive modeling, and design theory.

In addition to my research work, I enjoy advising undergraduate or masters students who are interested in doing human-AI interaction research. My goal is to support future generations of researchers that are interested in pursuing graduate education. If you are a UC Berkeley student and are interested, please feel free to reach out. Outside of research, I am a passionate dancer!

Research Interests

Human-AI Interaction: conversational agents, AI safety, multimodal interactions
Design: interaction models, design frameworks, human factors
Machine Learning: generative models, optimization, computational simulations

News

[January 2025] Our paper comparing LLM generated ideas versus human crowdsourced ideas got published to ASME Journal of Computing and Information Science in Engineering
[September 2024] I am returning to NASA Langley Research Center to continue my research project!
[August 2024] Our paper about human-AI collaboration with NASA got accecpted to IDETC 2024.
[May 2024] I have begun my research internship at HP Inc.
[Jan. 2024] I have begun my research internship at NASA Langley Research Center.
[May 2023] Our paper about conceptual design generation is accepted to IDETC 2023.
[Aug. 2022] Started my PhD program at UC Berkeley

Teaching

DESINV15 - Design Methodology

DESINV200 - Design Frameworks

I am grateful to both the students and instructors for their support as I strive to improve as a teacher. Your guidance has been invaluable in helping me learn how to better assist you in my role as an instructor.