​Ding Ma was born in Sichuan, a southwest province in China. He read chemistry in Sichuan University (1996), and obtained his Ph.D in 2001 from the State Key Laboratory of Catalysis, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (2001, Prof. Xinhe Bao & Prof. Yide Xu). After his postdoctoral stay in Oxford University (Prof. M.L.H. Green) and University of Bristol (Prof. Stephen Mann), he started his research career in Dalian Institute of Chemistry as associate professor (2005). He was promoted as a full professor in 2007 and moved to Peking University in 2009. His research interests are heterogeneous catalysis, especially those related with energy issues, including C1 chemistry (methane, CO₂ and syngas conversion), new reaction route for sustainable chemistry and the development of in-situ spectroscopic method that can be operated at working reaction condition to study reaction mechanism. He is the Advisory Member for various journals and has been Associate Editor for the catalysis journal of RSC, Catalysis Science & Technology since 2014, and been elected as the Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2016.