Dr. Ma grew up in Beijing, China and attended Tsinghua University majoring in Biology. After moving to the States, he obtained an MD and PhD from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. His PhD work focused on the characterization of novel neurotransmitters in the brain critical for learning and memory, which led to a discovery of how the dysregulation of certain neurotransmitters in fetal development may result in schizophrenia in adult life. After an internship in the Internal Medicine Preliminary program at the University of Washington, he continued residency training in Radiation Oncology at UCLA. His clinical research interests include advanced imaging modalities (e.g. multi-parametric MRI and PSMA PET/CT) in the diagnosis, staging and treatment delivery of prostate cancer.